


i know you're gone (this is where i will cross my line)

by BlackVultures



Category: MacGyver (TV 2016)
Genre: Anal Fingering, Anal Sex, Angry Russians, Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, Barebacking, F/M, First Kiss, First Time, Hand Jobs, M/M, Mac Sees Dead People, Mission Fic, Multiple Orgasms, Mutual Pining, Not Actually Unrequited Love, Not Really Character Death, Overstimulation, Pining, Road Trips, Rough Sex, So Much Illegal Stuff, Temporary Amnesia, The Tags Make It Sound Kinkier Than It Is, There's a Lot of Dead People, Torture
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-08
Updated: 2019-02-02
Packaged: 2019-10-06 11:49:59
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 6
Words: 21,868
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17344736
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BlackVultures/pseuds/BlackVultures
Summary: Bozer’s dark eyes went shiny with tears, and for a second he didn’t look like he was able to speak. Then, so quietly Mac had to strain to hear him: “He’s gone, Mac.”On the outside Mac blinked in confusion, but inside his anxiety had ramped up to full-blown panic. “What? Gone where?”Bozer shook his head, glancing at the floor and sniffling. “No, man. He’s…gonegone. There was an explosion. You got thrown clear, but Jack… didn’t.” His next admission was a whisper. “It was so bad all they found was a tooth.”(Also known as: Mac wakes up in the hospital with no memory of the mission that claimed his partner's life. Refusing to believe the worst, he embarks on his own investigation to find out what happened, recruits some unlikely allies, and finds out there are much worse fates than death.)





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [blackrose1002](https://archiveofourown.org/users/blackrose1002/gifts).



> **Disclaimer: In case it wasn't obvious from my choice of tags, JACK ISN'T ACTUALLY DEAD! Everyone just _thinks_ he is, which is plenty of pain in my book.**
> 
> So... I said this on Tumblr already, but y'all are gonna kill me for this one. Like full-on pitchforks and torches, raiding my house in the night kill me dead. The inspiration from this one came from [blackrose1002](https://archiveofourown.org/users/blackrose1002/pseuds/blackrose1002), aka dont-stop-believin-in-klaine (her fics are amazing, go check them out!), who wanted to see a fic based off this prompt: **"Character A is made to believe that Character B is dead and fucking LOSES IT. Self destructive depression spiral, murderous rampage, etc. - later it comes out that Character B is okay, and Character A realizes from their actions the sheer depth of their feelings about Character B."** Naturally, I was TOTALLY DOWN for this, and it somehow spiraled into this absolute beast. Beta read by the lovely [lavendersblues](https://archiveofourown.org/users/lonely_lovebird/pseuds/lavendersblues), so any remaining mistakes are my own. I didn't use Archive warnings/employed minimal tags because I want to leave y'all in suspense, but if there's something triggering I need to tag then I will. However, the rating is M for language, worse than canon violence, and my general habit of torturing characters I love, and as with most of my fics it might change to E later. I hope you enjoy, and please let me know what you think!
> 
> Title is from "From Can To Can't" by Corey Taylor, Dave Grohl, et al. off the _Real To Reel_ album. I cannot stress how important it is to listen to this song at some point while reading this fic - without it I wouldn't have had a lot of my nefarious ideas.

Angus MacGyver’s eyes snapped open from a dreamless sleep, and he had no idea where he was.

His mind felt pliable and heavy all at once, like the contents of a lava lamp, formless and reshaping as it adapted to its environment. A soft mattress underneath him meant a bed, and as his vision adjusted to the shadows of the room, he noted the plastic guard rails—a hospital bed, which equaled a hospital room. Not unusual considering his line of work, although his weightless limbs and the tingle at his lips suggested he was coming down from the _really_ good drugs.

Between the burnt orange glow of light pollution filtering in through the blinds and the steady glow of the various monitors, Mac was able to make out a visitor’s chair in the corner opposite his bed. Bozer sat there, fast asleep with his head tipped back and snoring lightly. His normally cheerful face looked haggard, lines of tension showing in his forehead and around his mouth. A small duffle bag sat next to his chair, probably full of stuff for Mac once he woke up.

This was Mac’s first clue that something was amiss. Where was Jack?

He could count on the fingers of one hand the number of times he’d been hurt badly enough to warrant morphine, and every time Jack was next to his bed when he woke up, either in a heinously uncomfortable chair or a bed of his own because he was injured too. And speaking of fingers, Mac cautiously wiggled those and his toes to make sure all his floaty-feeling extremities were still attached. A flex of his abdominal muscles was enough to make him hiss, pain slicing through the drug fog like a hot knife through butter.

The noise startled Bozer from his slumber. He glanced around in confusion for a moment before his eyes settled on Mac. “Hey, you’re awake!” he exclaimed, dropping his voice to a whisper when he remembered where he was. “How do you feel?”

“Like shit,” Mac said. His brows furrowed as he ran the hand with the IV in it along his chest and stomach, able to feel bandages covering most of his torso through his flimsy hospital gown. “Where’s Jack?”

Was it Mac’s imagination, or did Bozer’s lower lip tremble? He covered for it by leaning forward, hands clasped between his knees. “What do you remember?”

Concern for his partner building in the form of tightness at the base of his skull, Mac only contemplated the question because it was Bozer asking. Disconcertingly, Mac realized that he couldn’t remember how he wound up in the hospital. The last thing he recalled clearly was Jack picking him and Bozer up for the drive over to the Phoenix that morning, Metallica blasting from the radio and the three of them bickering about _Star Wars_ on the highway. Everything after that was a big blank spot.

The confusion Mac felt seeped into his voice: “Riding in the car this morning?” Bozer’s pained expression made the tight feeling in the back of Mac’s head turn into a drumbeat. He knew wasn’t from a concussion, because if he’d had one no credible doctor would’ve given him morphine; he recognized the feeling as the kind of anxiety he didn’t want to put a name to, and it was enough to make him start sweating. “Bozer, seriously, where the hell is Jack?”

Bozer’s dark eyes went shiny with tears, and for a second he didn’t look like he was able to speak. Then, so quietly Mac had to strain to hear him: “He’s gone, Mac.”

On the outside Mac blinked in confusion, but inside his anxiety had ramped up to full-blown panic. “What? Gone where?”

Bozer shook his head, glancing at the floor and sniffling. “No, man. He’s… _gone_ gone. There was an explosion. You got thrown clear, but Jack… didn’t.” His next admission was a whisper. “It was so bad all they found was a tooth.”

For a single, breathless instant, Mac’s entire world stood still. The moment before Bozer’s words sunk in was crystalline in its fragility, and then everything came crashing down around him.

 _No, no, no_ , Mac thought, and distantly he knew he was saying it out loud, his hearing filled with static as his eyes blurred with tears. He sat up in bed, pain lancing through his chest like the fire that had burned him, but it was nothing compared to the feeling of his heart cracking in half. The monitors at his bedside beeped and squealed their protest, and Mac ripped the IV out of his hand and tore the oxygen monitor off his finger. He made a sound that was half-sob, half animalistic. “You’re wrong, you’re wrong—you _have_ to be wrong.”

Bozer was across the room in seconds, climbing over the plastic guardrail on to the bed and wrapping his arms around Mac with a tightness he hadn’t used since Mac came back from his last deployment. Mac grabbed his forearm and squeezed hard, still muttering _no no no_ under his breath, every part of him shaking like a leaf in the wind.

“I’m sorry, Mac,” Bozer murmured, voice close to his ear and wrecked by grief. “I’m so sorry.”

Mac buried his face in his best friend’s shoulder and cried, and for a while he wished the explosion had taken him too.

 

~***~

 

The following morning brought rain pounding against the window and familiar faces. Leanna and Matty filed into Mac’s hospital room like they were attending a wake, quiet and withdrawn. Both women looked as burned out as Bozer did, their own mourning etched into their features like permanent tattoos.

Mac sat in the furthest corner of the room, limbs sprawled haphazardly, the wounds he’d yet to see burning with every breath he took. Bozer had stayed with him through the night and covered him with a blanket when he’d refused to sleep in the bed, but Mac barely felt the chill of the room. He didn’t react when his visitors entered beyond briefly raising his head, shaggy blond hair mostly obscuring his puffy eyes and hollowed-out expression.

“Mac, I—” Matty began, cracks present in her usually brusque tone. At her shoulder, Leanna swiped the back of her hand over her eyes. “I’m so sorry. Jack was—”

“Don’t,” Mac interjected, vocal chords grinding together. Lack of hydration and too much crying would do that to you. “Don’t do that. I don’t believe it.”

Matty blinked rapidly, telegraphing her surprise, and Leanna asked, “What do you mean?”

Mac cleared his throat. “I don’t believe he’s dead.” When all three people in the room stared at him, he added haltingly, “Bozer said all they found was a tooth. There’s lots of ways people can lose teeth. And why was I thrown clear, and he… wasn’t?”

“That’s what I came here to ask you.” Matty fixed Bozer with a look that suggested she was going to take him out in the hallway and skin him alive for telling Mac about the recovery operation. “What do you remember about the blast?”

“Nothing,” Mac replied. He dropped his head into the hand stained with blood from where he’d yanked out the IV port; he hadn’t allowed the nurse to clean it up or put in another one. “They told me I don’t have a head injury, but I don’t remember anything past the ride into work.” He felt rather than saw Matty sit next to him on the floor, heedless of getting hospital grime on her dress pants. “Tell me about the mission?”

“Close to home, literally and otherwise,” Matty said. “You and Jack were tailing an old contact from Jack’s CIA days by the name of Cletus Maxwell. The agency suspected—but couldn’t prove—he might have turned traitor. Since Jack knew him the best, it made sense to send him, and… well, we couldn’t send him without sending you, now could we?”

“And the CIA didn’t want to send their own assets because if this Maxwell guy was a traitor, that would put them in jeopardy. Better to send us instead because they don’t like Jack anyway.”

“Exactly. So you two followed him around LA County for a few days, but he didn’t do anything interesting. Meanwhile, Riley got into his financials—”

Mac held up his non-bloody hand to interrupt. “Where _is_ Riley, anyway?”

Leanna chewed at her lower lip. “She’s… pretty devastated about Jack. Elwood’s with her.”

The sound of his partner’s name said in that pained way was enough to make Mac’s already broken heart shudder. He pushed his hair out of his face and forced himself to focus on finding out about what he couldn’t remember. “What did Riley dig up on Maxwell?”

“In addition to several offshore bank accounts with some payments she traced back to Moscow, Riley discovered Maxwell was paying the lease on a massive warehouse in Bakersfield,” Matty said. “Since his original profession was used car salesman that didn’t add up, and we suspected he might’ve been making the payments to cover for someone else. You and Jack went to check out the warehouse with Bozer and Leanna outside the industrial park for backup. That was what the briefing yesterday morning was about.”

Mac concentrated as hard as he could, but all he saw inside his mind was blackness. “I’ve got nothing.” He looked up at Bozer. “What happened next?”

“You guys drove in to the industrial park and said you saw cars parked outside the warehouse Maxwell was leasing,” Bozer responded. “One of them was his, and the plates on the others came back to a rental place out by LAX. Clearly some kind of meeting was going down, so you and Jack decided to go in on foot. You figured out which end of the building they were in, and we heard you talk about going in on the opposite end.”

“Comms cut out as soon as you went inside—Riley said it was some kind of onsite signal jammer,” Matty added. “We have no idea what happened from the time you entered the warehouse until the explosion, which was around ten minutes later.”

“Bozer and I were about to see if you needed help when it happened,” Leanna said, arms tight over her own torso like she was hugging herself. “There was this huge flash of light, and then the whole building just… disintegrated. We were close enough to see you fly through a big window on the side of the place—maybe in an office or something? The whole front of your shirt was gone, and there was blood everywhere…”

She trailed off, and Bozer reached over to squeeze one of her hands; Mac had to look away, his wrecked throat suddenly gone tight.

“I went in to look for Jack, man—he wasn’t there,” Bozer said, and Mac had never doubted he’d done exactly that. “There were some bodies around, but they were so burned I couldn’t tell who they’d been.”

“Forensics thinks the warehouse was used to store ammonium nitrate prills used for mining,” Matty said. “Which would explain the bright flash Leanna and Bozer saw as well as the breadth of the explosion.”

“I want to see it.” Mac pushed off the blanket and got to his feet with a little help from the nearest wall. His wounds pulled as they shifted under their dressings, but the last thing he wanted was more pain medication. He’d pop some Tylenol and be fine. “Bozer, hand me my clothes?”

Bozer retrieved the duffle bag he’d brought for when Mac was released, but he hesitated before handing it over. “Mac, are you sure that’s a good idea? You’re not in the best shape.”

“I’ll be okay,” Mac assured, keeping his Tylenol plan to himself. He plopped the bag on the bed and rifled through it until he came up with jeans and a blue plaid button-down. “I have to check myself out of here, and I need a car.”

“There’s no way you can drive, Mac,” Leanna protested. “At least let Matty get a car for you.”

“I can get him ten cars,” Matty said quietly, staring Mac dead in the eyes. “That’s not going to bring Jack back.”

Mac sucked in a breath and willed himself not to do something he would regret, like punch his boss in the face. “No, it’s not. I am. And I’ll walk to Bakersfield if I have to.”

Slinging the duffel bag over his shoulder, Mac headed for the door. He wasn’t surprised that nobody followed him.

 

~***~

 

Mac wasn’t deranged enough to _actually_ walk to Bakersfield, and there were a few things he needed to do after signing himself out of the hospital against medical advice. First, he dug through the duffle bag and found his wallet was mercifully intact, so he went to the ATM in the hospital lobby and withdrew as much cash as he could. Next he hit up the nearest pharmacy and bought a pre-paid smartphone and charging cord, the Tylenol he wanted, and some miscellaneous snacks and medical supplies.

Lastly, he retrieved his Swiss Army knife from the bag and ducked into the pharmacy’s bathroom to scrub the blood off himself and give his hair a sink shower. He studied his reflection in the mirror, noting the tiny cuts from flying glass and a large bruise on his jaw. He didn’t look his best, although the circles under his eyes left something to be desired. Sleep, however, was going to have to wait, and Mac popped open a can of Red Bull and took a swig with three Tylenol as he left the pharmacy.

And stopped dead in his tracks at the sight of his father leaning against the side of a black sedan.

“Heard you could use a ride to Bakersfield,” James MacGyver said, twirling a key fob absently around his finger. He looked Mac up and down and frowned. “Should you even be out of bed?”

“Spare me the concerned father shtick,” Mac replied, trying and failing to hide a wince as he pulled his now much heavier duffle bag up his shoulder. “Matty call you?”

“Bozer,” James corrected. “He sounded like he did it from a bathroom—my guess is he didn’t want Matty to know.” He hit the button for the car’s remote start. “Whatever she saw out at that blast site convinced her about what happened to Dalton. Bozer getting me involved would just upset her.”

Mac swallowed hard and cut his eyes away from his father. “Yeah, well, I’d like to see the place for myself.”

James straightened up and pulled open the passenger’s door. “Then get in. I promise to keep my concerned father shtick to myself.”

Mac liked to think he was decent at reading situations from a tactical perspective, a talent that he owed largely to Jack’s teachings. If he didn’t take his dad up on his offer, he really would probably have to walk to Bakersfield, unless he wanted to spend all his cash on an Uber or risk getting shanked by a meth head on a bus.

Reluctantly, he brushed past James and got in the car.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey guys! Thanks for all the love on the first chapter! The second chapter introduces some plot elements and angsts a lot - oh, and also there's Murdoc. Beta read by the always lovely [lavendersblues](https://archiveofourown.org/users/lonely_lovebird/pseuds/lavendersblues) so any further mistakes are my own. Please let me know what you think and what you're expecting from chapter three!!!

The drive from downtown Los Angeles to the industrial park in Bakersfield took about two hours, the sun high in the sky by the time they reached their destination. During the drive James and Mac spoke only a handful of times, and not about anything important. To his credit, James stayed true to his word and didn’t act like a concerned father, and Mac did his best to not grind his molars together every time the car hit a bump and jostled his wounds.

The industrial park was nothing special, a rectangle of two dozen or so large buildings in a neighborhood of business and storage centers. Right away, Mac spotted what was left of the warehouse; the only things standing were a couple of metal corner braces and twisted clumps of sheet metal that used to be walls. The whole property was cordoned off with crime scene tape, but the recovery and forensics teams from Phoenix were gone.

James parked the sedan across the street from the blast site and glanced at Mac. “Bozer said you couldn’t remember anything before. How about now?”

Mac was about to say no, but out of the corner of his eye he saw a flash of yellow and something came back to him:

_They’d been camped across the street from Maxwell’s warehouse for about twenty minutes before Jack pointed a covert finger to the next building over and asked in an incredulous tone, “Does that place actually make rubber ducks?”_

_Mac looked over and stifled a laugh. “Since they’ve got a giant sign outside in the shape of one, I hope they do.”_

_Jack peered at him over the tops of his aviators. “You serious? Rubber ducks are creepy as hell, dude.”_

_This time Mac did laugh, a fond sound even as he glanced at Jack disbelievingly. “They’re bath toys—how are they creepy?”_

_“Well for one thing, they’re practically indestructible,” Jack said. His fingers drummed absently against the steering wheel, and Mac watched that for a while but tore his gaze away before his thoughts wandered to what other things those fingers could do. “I mean, have you ever seen somebody destroy one of those things? And those_ eyes _! Always beady, always staring at you, watching you shower—“_

“Okay, I’ve heard enough,” James cut in, knocking Mac out of his sun-warmed memory, silly as it was, with all the grace of a rhinoceros. “Last thing I need to think about is Dalton in the shower. Do you think this is relevant somehow?”

“I don’t know,” Mac said, annoyance seeping into his tone. “And I’m not going to find out by sitting here.” He got out of the car and crossed the street, not looking to see if James followed him but not entirely surprised when he heard the driver’s door open and shut. For all his faults, his father was as naturally curious as Mac was, and that could be advantageous in certain scenarios.

As soon as he crossed the police tape, Mac agreed with the forensics team: the warehouse had definitely housed ammonium nitrate at the time of the explosion, because the sour chemical tang of ammonia was present in the air even a full day later. It was enough to make him pull the collar of his shirt up over his nose and mouth when he reached the ruins of the building, shifting fabric behind him indicating James doing the same.

“You take the front, I’ll check out the back and we’ll meet in the middle?” James said, and he managed to phrase it like a suggestion instead of an order.

Mac grunted an acknowledgment and moved further inside the wreckage. He noted charred outlines on the floor where bodies had lain, along with pieces of wooden chairs and metal chains. He picked his way around some shipping crates—they’d held empty M4 rifles, not ammonium nitrate prills, which was the reason they were still mostly intact—and ducked into what had once been the office which Bozer and Leanna saw him leave the quick way. There wasn’t much left intact, but he could see the hole where the window used to be, and something that used to be a computer desk.

He went back to the area with the chairs and chains, and although he couldn’t remember it, a picture began forming in his mind: he and Jack had gotten caught sneaking around, were outnumbered, and got tied up to be interrogated. If Maxwell saw Jack he would’ve told their captors about Jack’s government affiliation and that would’ve been a big problem for whatever Russian organization had turned Maxwell traitor.

But how did that lead to an explosion of this magnitude, one that was enough to kill the Russian henchmen and maybe even—

“No,” Mac muttered to himself, refusing to think of Jack as anything but alive. The alternative just didn’t add up in his mind, and thinking about it being reality made him itch. “There has to be _something_ here…”

His boot scuffed against something rougher than the concrete floor, and it was enough to make him look down. Two of the crates that had held the M4s were further from the blast radius than the rest, and one had been pushed slightly in front of the other, creating the scrape in the floor that Mac’s boot hit. The placement of the crate looked deliberate, and since he was already grasping at straws, Mac put his shoulder against the corner of the crate and shoved once, twice, gasping for breath and seeing spots by the third time.

Luckily, the third time was the charm, and the crate moved far enough to show him what it had been concealing; on the face of the crate behind it near the ground was a drawing, one that had been painted in a hurry in something red-brown and crusty. Mac crouched down and pulled out his prepaid phone to take a picture of the image—it was messy, but it sort of looked like a bird—before touching it, his fingers coming away with flakes of dried blood. Leaving Mac a message in his own blood was one-hundred percent something Jack Dalton would do, and looking at the messy bird drawing and trying to decipher its significance, Mac felt sleep-deprived enough to recall the conversation they’d had about rubber ducks and let out a slightly hysterical chuckle. While the bird in the drawing had bulging eyes, it was definitely supposed to be a bird of prey, like an eagle, not a duck. There was also another splotch over its head—a star, maybe?

It looked to Mac like some kind of gang symbol, but not one from the United States. Riley could find out, but if Mac brought this to her and he was wrong about Jack ( _don’t think about that, keep going_ ) it would only serve to hurt her further. Mac could do some digging himself, but while he was decent with a computer that route would waste time Jack didn’t have if he was being held hostage by bunch of international criminals.

“Find anything, Angus?” James’s voice rang out across the rubble, and hearing his given name gave Mac a terrible idea.

He stood up quickly—too quickly, if the rush of blood to his head was any indication—and slipped his phone back in his pocket before James saw it. “No, I didn’t,” he said, doing his best to sound disappointed. “Would you mind giving me a ride back to the Phoenix? I’d like to read the mission briefing and see if anything else comes back to me.”

James put a hand out like he was going to pat him on the shoulder but thought better of it. “Of course not. Let’s go.”

 

~***~

 

The news of Jack’s supposed demise hadn’t reached the administrative level of the Phoenix when Mac got there, because it was easy to convince an intern to let him take a car out of the auto pool even though he hardly ever drove. He selected a Cadillac Escalade with a push-bar and a sunroof—you never knew when either of those features would come in handy—and hit the highway for the second time.

It took him almost five hours to drive from Phoenix HQ to Atwater, a little town situated almost exactly halfway between Modesto and Fresno, and he hated every minute of it. The traffic, the noise, the constant need to be alert—all of it was enough to set Mac’s teeth on edge and make his shoulders hunch up around his ears. When he spotted the correct exit he let out a sigh of relief, and it didn’t take much finagling with the GPS to find his destination.

United States Penitentiary, Atwater was a maximum security federal prison located on land that once belonged to Castle Air Force Base, and as such was surrounded by blank, unremarkable landscape and an awful lot of concrete. The visitors’ lot held a modest amount of cars for a weekday afternoon, and Mac took his time once he arrived. He made a phone call, left a voice mail, and took more Tylenol and scarfed down a granola bar that tasted like wallpaper paste. Then he scrounged around for a pen and spent about ten minutes glancing between a mirror and his phone; he did his best to copy the drawing from the shipping crate on to the gauze covering his chest, which had been wrapped tightly enough in the hospital that it was almost flat. He was no artist, but he thought the sketch conveyed the general idea.

Mac left everything but his wallet in the duffle bag, shifted around a few wires in the Cadillac, and took a jog around to the employee parking lot. He left his bag in a mostly-empty trash can before heading back around to the front of the prison and going inside. He waited patiently for his turn to go through the metal detector, and made it to the other side with no problem. The guard behind the bulletproof glass raised an eyebrow when he saw what prison Mac asked to see, but a quick call up to the warden confirmed what Mac had already known: he was on the permanent list for visitation. He was taken to a six-by-six concrete room with cameras on the walls, a metal table bolted to the floor and equipped with arm restraints and leg irons, and a visitor’s chair that looked slightly more comfortable than the one for the prisoner, but only because the visitor’s chair wasn’t bolted to the floor.

He was told to wait while they retrieved the inmate. When the door to the room opened again, Mac willed himself not to tense when he heard an all-too familiar voice: “Well, isn’t _this_ a surprise! Angus MacGyver, as I live and breathe.”

Mac tilted his head in acknowledgement once Murdoc was secured across the table from him and the guards left the room, deadbolts sliding into place behind them. “Murdoc. I’d say it’s nice to see you again, but it’s not.”

“Well I’ve been great, thanks for asking.” The psychopath eyed Mac critically and sucked in a breath through his teeth. “You’ve looked better, though. Not that you don’t always carry an air of self-loathing and guilt, but today it seems more… profound.” He leaned his elbows on the table as far as his shackles would allow, resting his chin on top of his fists and projecting faux concern. “Penny for your thoughts?”

“I’m not here on Phoenix business,” Mac said, figuring he better rip off the metaphorical Band-Aid. “This is personal.”

Murdoc’s eyes glinted black and reptilian under the fluorescent lights. “Mhmm, I figured it might be.” He paused. “I noticed your guard dog isn’t at your heel. Did you have him put down?”

By some miracle Mac didn’t flinch ( _never let them see you sweat, kid_ , Jack’s voice said in his mind, another long-ago lesson), but he did say, “A lot of people think Jack’s dead, but I don’t. Since nobody at Phoenix will back my play, I’m trying to find him on my own.”

“Oh, you’re a regular army of one,” Murdoc said, in a way that suggested he couldn’t muster more sarcasm if he tried. “And how does that equal your pretty face gracing my doorstep?”

A sour taste creeping up the back of his throat, Mac spit out words he never thought he’d say: “I need your help.”

Murdoc _laughed_ , throwing his head back like that was the funniest thing he’d ever heard. “Now that’s hilarious—you’ve truly outdone yourself this time, Mac.” He wiped away an imaginary tear and fixed Mac with a hard stare. “And what could you possibly offer me in exchange? As you know, I don’t work for free.”

Mac scratched behind an ear, deliberately showing Murdoc the paperclip he’d smuggled in inside his wallet, and said quietly, “I can break you out of here.”

Murdoc had the grace to look surprised—a jailbreak was no doubt the last thing he’d expected his favorite Boy Scout to bring to the table. “Tempting. What is it you want, exactly?”

Paperclip now secured in his hair, Mac undid the first button on his flannel shirt, pulling the collar down to expose the copied drawing on his bandages. To whomever was watching the camera feed, it would hopefully look like he was showing off a tattoo (which in itself would be strange, but not as strange as reality). “What gang does this logo belong to?”

Murdoc squinted at his chest. “Is that a… rubber duck?”

Mac did a double-take and shook his head. “What? No, I think it’s an eagle or something.”

Murdoc studied the image for a few seconds, and Mac could practically see the gears turning in his head. When the psychopath snapped his fingers, he knew he had answer. “That _is_ an eagle—albeit a badly drawn one—and the thing over its head is a star. You, my dear genius, have stumbled upon one of the many tattoos popular with the Chechen mob.”

Mac sat back, not bothering to button his shirt; the next part of his plan would be easier that way. “Chechens? That would make sense.” Quickly, he gave Murdoc the rundown on Cletus Maxwell and the meeting gone awry at the warehouse. “Jack called Maxwell a professional shit-talker—it was what made him such a good car salesman. Maybe he didn’t sell out the CIA… what if he was acting as a broker?”

Murdoc inclined his head. “In my experience good liars often wind up as middlemen. I suppose the question to ask now is _what_ was he brokering—clearly the Chechens were one team, but who was the other?”

“I don’t know yet,” Mac said, but he was determined to figure it out. He met Murdoc’s gaze. “Do you have any connections in Chechnya?”

“One or two, if they’re still alive,” Murdoc replied. “But if you want me to find out, you’d best get on with the show.”

Mac smirked wryly, fishing the paperclip out of his hair and palming it off to Murdoc in what looked like an accidental brush of their hands. “Pick your cuffs under the table and follow my lead when the door opens.”

Taking in a fortifying breath, Mac worked his fingers back under his collar, only this time he went under the bandages too. He felt the rough texture of burned skin, and further down on his pectoral he encountered a neat row of stitches, which he immediately dug his nails into and tore apart. He swallowed the shout of pain that wanted to come out of his mouth and dug in deeper, forcing enough blood to swell out of the wound to cause alarm.

Murdoc was eerily good at playing along with the charade, alarm ringing in his voice as he called, “ _Guard_! Guard, you should get in here—something’s wrong with Agent MacGyver!”

As soon as Mac heard the deadbolts in the door snap open he was on his feet, lifting up the metal chair he’d been sitting in and turning at the waist when he swung it at the guard entering the room. The guard took the impact on his leading shoulder and head, and as he fell Mac used the legs of the chair to hit the second guard coming in behind him in the face. That hit wasn’t enough to render the second guard unconscious, but a quick blast with the first guard’s stun gun was.

Murdoc relieved both guards of their handguns and held them out to Mac. “That was impressive—would you hang on to these for me? Jumpsuits are inconvenient for many things, carrying potential useful weapons being one of them.”

Mac rolled his eyes but took the weapons, checking to make sure the safeties were on before sticking them in the back of his waistband. He glanced around to make sure the hallway was clear before stepping over the fallen guards. “Come on, we have to get to the emergency exit before they call for a lockdown.”

They did exactly that, hustling down a series of back corridors before bursting outside through a one-way fire exit. Hustling back to the trash can, Mac retrieved his duffle bag and led Murdoc to the most unremarkable vehicle he could see, a tan Toyota Corolla near the back corner of the lot and had old-fashioned pull-up locks. Working quickly, Mac stripped a lace from one of his boots, tied a loop in it, and worked it into the space between the car door and the frame.

A few seconds later, he had the door open and was pulling off the steering column covering to hotwire the engine. “How we doing, Murdoc?”

“Well, nobody looking—ah, never mind,” Murdoc said. “Four guards down in the visitors lot are working their way up here. You have ten seconds.”

Mac twisted around to point at the duffle bag, which was still on the ground near Murdoc’s feet. “Grab the car keys from in there and press the remote start button.”

Murdoc looked at him warily but did as he was instructed, and the Cadillac Mac had left in the visitors lot blew apart in a spectacular fireball. It was more than enough to catch the attention of the guards, and a moment later Mac got the Corolla’s engine started. Murdoc threw the bag in the backseat and crawled in after it, ducking below the level of the windows so the bright orange of his prison jumpsuit wasn’t visible.

Calm as anything, Mac backed out of the parking spot and headed for the auxiliary exit. He didn’t release the breath he was holding until they were on the road out of Atwater.


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> You guys are amazing. I love you. Your support is nothing short of incredible and I'm so happy you like this story! Rating is bumped up to E for a graphic death (NOT JACK) and eventual smut. Beta work done by [lavendersblues](https://archiveofourown.org/users/lonely_lovebird/pseuds/lavendersblues) so any additional mistakes are mine. As always, please let me know what you think!

Mac took Route 99 northwest to Modesto at a few miles above the speed limit in an effort to blend in (Californian drivers were not known for their patience), pulling off about forty minutes later at a Walmart. He buttoned up his shirt to hide his bloody bandages before he went in and used cash to buy himself and Murdoc clothes—including a couple of baseball caps and some sunglasses, Jack’s go-to spy disguise—more food and water, a bigger duffle bag, and three more prepaid smartphones. An impulse buy was a box of nine millimeter bullets for the handguns Murdoc stole off the two prison guards; Mac figured if nothing else, maybe the gunpowder and brass could be useful for something later.

Their next stop was a generic car rental place at the mall down the road. Mac left Murdoc to change in the stolen Corolla while he went inside and rented a dark blue Ford Edge. Fairly nondescript for a mid-size SUV, decent acceleration, and big enough to withstand some damage if necessary. In an attempt at small talk the rental agent asked why he needed a car, so Mac smiled in his best _aw-shucks_ imitation of Jack and said he and his cousin were taking a road trip to visit their uncle in Sante Fe.

When he got back to the Corolla, Murdoc was dressed in the polo shirt and jeans Mac bought him, leaning against the trunk and speaking on one of the burner phones in vaguely irritated Russian. Then again, Russians almost always sounded vaguely irritated—it was the nature of their language, and usually their personalities. Mac stayed behind the wheel of the Edge, drank half of an oversized bottle of water and tore open another granola bar with his teeth. He spat out the wrapper and gnawed on his food while he waited for Murdoc to finish verbally eviscerating the person on the other end of the line.

Murdoc hung up first, methodically sliding the back of the phone off and tossing the battery in a nearby sewer grate, the phone following a few seconds later. He got in the passenger’s seat of their rental and eyed Mac’s water bottle. “I don’t suppose there’s one for me?”

Mac nodded at the backseat where the two duffle bags sat. “Knock yourself out. Get any information?”

“When don’t I?” Murdoc said dryly, cracking open his own water and taking a swig. “Good news is one of my two Chechen contacts is still alive, and he’s in Reno. Bad news is he’s going on a vacation to Tahiti, and if we don’t get there by nine tonight he’ll already be on a plane.” A moment’s pause, and then as an afterthought: “Oh, and I don’t trust him not to shoot us when we get there.”

Mac pinched the bridge of his nose and did some quick math. “Okay, it’s about six o’clock… if we leave right now, we might make it.”

Murdoc’s mouth was now full of granola. “We’ll definitely make it if I drive.”

Mac remembered how Murdoc drove from their first not-so-friendly road trip (read: kidnapping) together, and decided the additional speed was worth the risk of a psychopath behind the wheel. “Fine, but you have to wear this.”

He crammed one of the baseball caps on Murdoc’s head and they switched seats. A moment later they were off, heading north on 99 toward Stockton in order to catch the highway. Mac put on his cheap shades to block out the sunset (and if they happened to be yellow-lensed aviators, well, he wasn’t going to examine that too closely) and took out his burner phone to call his voicemail. He had ten messages, nine of them a mixed bag of outrage from Matty and concern from Bozer.

There was no message from the person he’d wanted to call him back, but there was something interesting from his father: “Angus… this is your dad. I know you probably don’t give a damn what I have to say, but just listen anyway. I may not have a reason to think Dalton’s alive, but clearly you do, and I’d like to think if the shoe was on the other foot he’d believe in you as much as you believe in him. If you need _anything_ , anything at all, call me at this number.” James listed a number that definitely didn’t belong to Oversight, and ended the message with, “Be careful, son. Try to come home in one piece.”

Murdoc glanced at him, hands at a relaxed ten and two on the steering wheel. “Daddy dearest getting all sentimental?”

Swallowing around a sudden lump in his throat, Mac muttered, “Shut up and drive.”

 

~***~

 

Murdoc’s Chechen contact lived in a small ranch-style house built in the 1970s and not updated since then. Bird nests sat atop the window shutters, and the mint-green home’s tiny lawn was bordered by a warped fence that would’ve looked more at home on a farm in Texas than on a street in Reno near the airport. When they got there a minivan was parked in the driveway, a lit sign on top indicating it was a taxi.

“Just in time,” Murdoc remarked, parking on the street and cutting the engine. He examined the outside of the house before cutting Mac a look. “Since I presume you don’t trust me to speak with him myself about Jack—”

Mac finished up a text message and put the burner phone away. “Give me the short version. Who is this guy?”

“Baudi Khasanov. Chechen expat turned real estate developer—which is convenient for him, because the money his properties bring in around here keeps the mob from killing him for abandoning the cause.” They got out of the Edge, but before they headed up the walkway Murdoc stopped Mac with an outstretched hand. “Be a dear and hand over those pistols, would you?”

Mac sighed out his nose, but he knew if things went south with Khasanov it was better for Murdoc to be armed than not. He pulled one of the guns from his waistband and slapped it into Murdoc’s palm. “Fine. I’m not giving you both.”

Murdoc’s mouth curled in a smirk. “Still don’t like guns, hmm? I’ll get that story out of you someday, boy wonder.” He checked the load before stowing his weapon in the back of his own waistband. “Let’s go.”

They rang the doorbell, and a harried man who couldn’t have been much taller than Matty answered. He looked to Mac less like a Chechen expat and more like one of those guys who thinks they’re a professional golfer but they really spend more time drinking in the bar at the country club. Tight chinos, a flat plaid cap over a balding head, and a sweater vest colored like an Easter egg made Khasanov look like he was in his sixties when he was probably half that age. His English was good, if a little soft at the edges: “Murdoc, you son of a bitch! Here I thought you weren’t going to show!”

Murdoc smiled his oily smile, the one that seemed genuine unless you knew what to look for. “Would I do a thing like that?” He reluctantly accepted a giant bear hug from Khasanov before gesturing to Mac. “Baudi, this is the… friend… I told you about on the phone—Angus?”

Khasanov turned on Mac with another bear hug and Mac did his best not to cringe; touching from people he didn’t know wasn’t his favorite thing. “Good to meet you, Angus! Tell me, are you and Murdoc in the same line of work?”

 _Breaking him out of jail brings the answer closer to yes than I’d like_ , Mac thought, but out loud he said, “Sort of. I have a problem, and Murdoc told me you might be able to help.”

“We’ll see about that! Come in, come in!” Khasanov waved them into a tiny entryway, a suitcase sitting by a shoe rack confirming his travel plans. The entryway branched off into a living room-kitchen combination complete with shag carpeting and wall-mounted lights that were orange enough to hurt Mac’s eyes. Their host made sure they sat on an uncomfortably small loveseat before making a beeline for the minibar. “Drink? Who needs a drink? I have vodka!”

Mac and Murdoc both politely declined— _at least we agree on not drinking on the job_ , Mac thought wryly—and waited for Khasanov to get settled in a wingback chair with a glass two-thirds full with liquid fire. Somewhere in the house a grandfather clock ticked rhythmically, and the taxi continued to idle outside.

Mac cleared his throat. “So a friend of mine went missing two days ago—”

Khasanov held up a hand. “And you think Chechen mob is involved?” When Mac nodded, his beady gray eyes went sad. “Then I am afraid your friend is most likely dead.”

Murdoc titled his head in acknowledgment. “That’s what I think too, but this friend is… aggravatingly difficult to kill. And if there is even a microscopic possibility he’s alive, Angus is not going to stop looking for him.” He elbowed Mac. “Show him your phone.”

Mac produced the burner, navigating to the gallery and showing Khasanov the picture he’d taken of the eagle and star drawn in blood. One of the many advantages of being able to put your own SIM card in a prepaid phone was never losing anything important. “My friend drew this on a shipping crate where he knew no one would bother to look except for me.” Seeing the curiosity seeping into Khasanov’s expression, Mac took a chance and asked, “Have you ever heard the name Cletus Maxwell?”

Khasanov’s eyebrows rose. “Actually, I have. He is a middleman, yes? Working out of Los Angeles?”

“He was also an informant for the federal government,” Murdoc said. “At least until recently. He’d worked with Angus’s friend in the past.”

Khasanov drained the last of his vodka and set down his glass, fingers rubbing at a nonexistent beard on his jaw. “That is interesting… perhaps your friend is not as dead as I thought. It is possible he has become a pawn in a larger game.”

Mac’s eyebrows furrowed. “What do you mean?”

“The political climate in Chechnya is always shit, but lately it is much worse,” Khasanov explained. “The Chechen mob is surrounded by groups who would benefit from their destruction. They must worry about the _Bratva_ as well as the Russian military and whatever Putin is calling the KGB nowadays.” He leaned forward, tubby stomach almost enough to drag him out of his chair. “Mamed Tsarnaev—new head of Chechen mob, father was assassinated—is looking to find a ‘magic bullet’ of sorts, something to help the Chechens not only take over the organized crime business, but possibly drive the Russians out of Chechnya altogether.”

“That’s a heavy undertaking,” Murdoc pointed out, exchanging a disbelieving look with Mac. “What could do something like that?”

“Rumor has it that Tsarnaev got in touch with Maxwell because Maxwell knows someone who is in possession of a stolen US government experiment,” Khasanov replied. He lowered his voice to a conspiratorial register. “I heard it was some kind of super serum—you know, like Captain America? KX7, I think they said.”

Mac felt his stomach drop into his boots. He’d been expecting Khasanov to describe a dirty bomb, or maybe a biological weapon, not James MacGyver’s botched attempt at creating the perfect soldier. “Are you sure—”

Before he could finish that sentence, the room around them burst apart in a cacophony of sound, gunfire strafing the front of the house. And as he hit the floor, Mac was struck by another flashback, filling a gap in his memory:

 _Once they agreed to go around to the end of the warehouse where the meeting_ wasn’t _happening, it took Mac slightly longer than usual to pick the lock on the delivery door because he was trying for silence. He managed it, though, and he slunk inside on Jack’s heels in a half-crouch. The building was roughly the size and shape of a football field, and about three-quarters full of large wooden shipping crates. Some of them had_ DANGER: AMMONIUM NITRATE _plastered to their sides, and others bore burned insignias from Colt Manufacturing, meaning they contained some kind of firearm—judging from the dimensions of the crates, Mac guessed M4s._

_The crates provided excellent cover, and Mac and Jack crept as close as they dared to a cleared spot near the center of the warehouse, right by a structure that looked like an office. It was too risky to poke their heads up to look even with the poor lighting, but Mac heard Cletus Maxwell’s Deep South drawl clearly, just in time for a plea for mercy to end on a scream. The unmistakable scent of burning flesh drifted their way a moment later, leaving no doubt their rogue CIA asset was being tortured._

_Jack tapped his comm, his shoulder brushing Mac’s with the gesture. “Hey guys? Looks like whatever deal Maxwell was after is going bad,” he said in a whisper, squinting in confusion when he got no response from the team. “Guys?”_

_Mac tried his own earpiece—no dice. “Comms are down. Must be a signal jammer.” He pressed an eye to a gap between the crates and was able to make out Maxwell’s skinny frame, tied to a chair and slumped down, a curl of smoke rising from his shoulder. An imposing man circled Maxwell, talking quietly but threateningly; the sight of him caused Mac to jolt slightly and grab Jack’s arm. “Is that Jonah Walsh?”_

_Jack took a peek of his own and grunted an affirmation. “Was wondering when we’d see this son of a bitch again. But what the hell’s he doing with a loser like Cletus Maxwell?”_

_“To know that we’ll have to get closer,” Mac said, frowning a little out of habit when he stated something obvious. That was a lesson imparted by his father before his untimely “death”—never say something somebody’s already thought of, because that makes you obsolete. Jack never seemed to mind the occasional slip-up on Mac’s part, though, which was one of the many, many things his partner did that made Mac’s heart do a funny flip-floppy thing in his chest at the worst times. Like now. “Be careful, though. Some of these crates have ammonium nitrate prills in them.” At Jack’s blank look, Mac amended, “You know, like fertilizer? A single gunshot and we could all go kaboom.”_

_Jack grinned at him in the half-dark, and Mac felt himself smile in return. “Well, at least we’ll stick to our motto, right?”_

_Mac was about to say_ you go kaboom _and let Jack finish it, but that was when he noticed the shadowy shape approaching Jack from behind. At the same instant that he saw the shape—a man, dressed in dark clothes and equipped with the cliché square jaw of an angry Russian—slam the butt of his gun into Jack’s skull, Mac felt the prick of a needle sliding into his neck, and then he didn’t see anything for a long time._

Mac slammed back into the present on his belly, surrounded by a sea of shag carpeting stained with blood and peppered with broken glass. He gave himself a mental once-over and figured out he wasn’t bleeding; behind him, Murdoc was swearing under his breath and already moving for cover behind the kitchen island. That meant—

Mac turned his head, and despite death being no stranger to him, he recoiled at the sight of Khasanov’s lifeless body sprawled on the floor. The man took a single, unlucky bullet directly to the temple that blew his skull apart like a rotten cantaloupe, flat cap and all. What was left of his mouth hung open, the gelatinous remains of an eye slack nearby, and all that raced through Mac’s mind was _this is what Jack would’ve looked like as that explosion tore him apart_ —

“MacGyver!” Murdoc hissed, aiming his gun at the front of the house. “Get over here _now_ , or so help me—”

A blast rocked the house hard enough to make those awful orange light fixtures fall off the walls, the remains of the door splintering inward from the accompanying air pressure. Once the shaking stopped and the smoke cleared, Mac raised his head enough to make out a distinctly female silhouette in the entryway, backlit by the burning wreck of the SUV that must’ve carried the gunmen who killed Khasanov. More flames closer to the house suggested the taxi driver wound up as collateral damage.

Samantha Cage stepped into the living room, flicking her long blonde hair out of her face with a toss of her head. She cradled a rocket launcher in the crook of her elbow like it was a baby and held a UMP in her free hand. A smile graced her features as she strapped the UMP to her shoulder and extended her hand to Mac, her Australian accent teasing but fond. “You’re lucky I was in Canada and not down under or you’d be mincemeat.”

Mac exhaled a laugh, grabbing Cage’s slim hand and pulling himself to his feet. His chest and abs throbbed in irritation, but his relief at seeing his former coworker outweighed the pain. “I’m just glad you got my voicemail. And my text with the address.”

Cage caught sight of Murdoc and all trace of humor left her features. “What the fuck is _that_ doing here?”

“Lovely to see you again, Samantha,” Murdoc drawled, straightening from his defensive stance. “How about we get out of here before the police show up? We can debate the merit of my presence once we’re not about to get involved in a terrorism investigation.”

“I’ll explain, I promise,” Mac said. He begged Cage with his eyes, gripping her forearm like a lifeline. “Please, just come with us?”

“Fine,” Cage relented after a beat, jerking her head toward the street. “Get your stuff and we’ll take my ride.”

 

~***~

 

Cage’s ride turned out to be a rented Chevy Impala, which was big enough to hold all three of them and their luggage without feeling cramped. She took back roads out of Khasanov’s neighborhood, following her GPS to a place called Windy Hill Scenic Overlook. At one in the morning there wasn’t much to see except an empty parking lot and city lights in the distance, but it gave them a place to catch their breath and talk. Once she parked, Mac caught Cage up on everything that had happened since he left her the voicemail from outside the prison. She watched him with that clear, steady gaze of hers, occasionally glancing at Murdoc in the backseat when he chimed in with a detail but paying the most attention to Mac.

“This KX7 stuff,” Cage said when he was done. “What does it do?”

“Ideally, it makes the perfect soldier,” Mac said. He could perfectly recall what his father had told him about it, because it was thing that had ultimately pulled James out of his life. “Increased strength, speed, and stamina, as well as faster sensory processing and reflexes. But when it was administered the last time, the results were… catastrophic. No one survived.”

“So less Captain America and more Winter Soldier,” Murdoc observed. When Cage and Mac both turned to stare at him, he raised his hands. “What? I watch movies.”

Cage smiled wryly and stared him dead in the eyes. “But now that I’m here and we have the information from Khasanov, I don’t think we need you around, Murdoc.”

“Oh, but you do,” Murdoc said. “As adorable as your Jack and Jill routine is, it’s not going to get you into Tsarnaev’s compound in the States, which I’d bet Mac’s precious little knife is where they took Dalton since transporting him overseas would be a nightmare.”

Mac rubbed his face and looked at Cage. “He has a point.”

She kept staring at Murdoc, expression flinty. “Okay. I don’t like it and I don’t trust you, but if we can use you, you stay.”

Murdoc rolled his eyes. “God, you shoot somebody and threaten to reveal their true identity _one_ time and everyone loses their minds.” He sat back and folded his hands in his lap, the picture of tranquility. “You have a deal. Now if I were you, I’d book a flight from Reno-Tahoe to Boston. That’s where the Chechen mob holes up when they’re in country.”

Cage pulled out her phone to look up flight times, and Mac set up a new burner phone to call Riley. He didn’t want to drag her into this—especially since he still had no proof Jack was alive—but he didn’t see another option. They needed more intelligence, and if KX7 and Jonah Walsh were involved Mac couldn’t trust his father not to put his own interests above Jack’s.

Riley answered after several rings, her voice a small, hoarse thing Mac had never heard before: “What?”

“Riles, it’s me,” Mac said. His free hand clenched and unclenched against his thigh; he didn’t think he was good at comforting people under normal circumstances, and time was a factor. “Look, I can’t tell you where I am and I don’t know what the others told you—”

She sniffled and tried to disguise it with a cough. “They said you think Jack’s… that he’s not…”

“I do,” Mac confirmed, and despite all his doubts, he still felt conviction in his bones that Jack was alive. “I know it’s asking a lot, Riley, but do you still have Cletus Maxwell’s financials on your computer?”

Some rustling in the background, like Riley was getting out of bed and digging in her backpack. “Yeah, I do. What do you need?”

Mac chewed on his lower lip, a habit he thought he’d broken in college—he was learning all kinds of things about himself. He glanced at Cage tapping away at her phone and had an idea. “Can you check Maxwell’s credit cards? Look at the past couple of days and see if there’s been any activity.”

He could hear the frown in Riley’s voice. “But Maxwell died in the—oh, I get it.” Some tapping at a keyboard, and the next time she spoke there were signs of life in her words. “His American Express chartered a private jet out of Bakersfield the same day you guys were out there, but the timestamp says happened _after_ the warehouse blew.” Even more keys clicked, faster now. “Let me see if I can find security footage from the airport.”

The minute or so of silence made Mac’s shoulders go tight, and the sharp gasp Riley let out when she found the footage nearly made him jump out of his skin. “Riley, what is it?”

“Oh, my God,” Riley said. She made a sound like she was trying not to throw up. “It’s that guy—your dad’s old partner? He’s dressed up as FBI with three other goons, and they’re pulling along a…”

Mac clenched the phone so tightly he was afraid it would break. “Tell me.”

“A body bag,” Riley finished, her voice breaking. “They have a body bag with them.”

Mac felt the world tip sideways, and he practically threw the burner at an unsuspecting Cage before pawing at the car door, barely getting it open in time to puke his guts out on the pavement. He shuddered, part of him hating himself for showing this kind of weakness in front of Murdoc, but another part too fucked up at the idea of whatever was left of Jack being a body bag to care.

Shockingly, it was Murdoc who leaned forward, speaking in a low tone to Mac while Cage attempted to calm Riley down: “MacGyver, use your head. Why would this Walsh fellow bother toting Dalton’s remains around?” He paused to let his words sink in, and waited for Mac to take in a shaky breath that wasn’t followed by more vomit. “He wouldn’t. Which means—”

“It means Jack’s alive.” Mac shut his eyes for just a moment, relief coursing through his veins like cool water after a drought. “I was right.”

Cage handed back the phone, and Riley said, “What do you need me to do, Mac? How can I help Jack?”

Mac thought for a moment, blinking away involuntary tears. “You need to tell Matty to keep the government off our backs. I’ll take the fall for breaking Murdoc out of prison—I’ll quit again if I have to—but they cannot come after us. If Tsarnaev even suspects he’s under the gun, he’ll kill Jack before we can get to him.” He exhaled, sitting up straight for the first time in he didn’t know how long. “Do _not_ tell my father about Walsh or the KX7. He needs to stay far away from this, for Jack’s sake but also his own. And get us some cover identities—we need to get Murdoc through the TSA, and Sam and I can’t risk approaching Tsarnaev as ourselves.”

“Okay, got it,” Riley said, and she sounded more like herself, calm and capable; to say Mac was thrilled about that would be an understatement. “And what are you guys going to do?”

Mac looked at Murdoc, then at Cage. They were both on board.

“We’re going to bring Jack home,” Mac said.


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Your continued support makes me SO happy. This one was beta read and edited by yours truly. I won't even be mad if you all decide to set my house on fire after this chapter. At least the boys are reunited? ¯\\_(ツ)_/¯

The first flight from Reno-Tahoe International to Boston left at seven-thirty in the morning, which provided enough time to get to the airport, let Cage return her rental, and ditch anything in their bags that wouldn’t make it through airport security (like the stolen guns and the rocket launcher). While Cage sat with Murdoc outside the terminal, Mac signed for the rushed courier package Riley sent from LA containing their fake identifications. From there, they coasted through the TSA and got to drink coffee and eat croissants at Starbucks. 

On the plane, Mac got the window seat, with Cage on the aisle and Murdoc sandwiched between them. Gently, Mac buckled his seatbelt, hissing under his breath when the motion pulled at his sutures. The bleeding where he’d torn his own wound open had stopped on its own earlier, but everything from his neck to his waist had felt like it was on fire more often than not.

“Try to get some sleep, Mac,” Cage advised. “I’ll keep an eye on _My Favorite Murder_.”

Murdoc looked incredulous. “What am I going to do, hijack the plane? No thank you.” The plane took off, and once the seatbelt light went dark he reclined back and crossed his arms over his chest. “Wake me up before we land—I’d rather not end up plastered to the ceiling.”

Mac huffed a quiet laugh, slumping down in his own seat. Within seconds, he was asleep.

_And immediately found himself back in the warehouse, waking up groggy and nauseous from whatever Jonah Walsh’s henchman had drugged him with. The back of his neck throbbed in time with his heart, and his mouth felt like he’d swallowed sand. He tried to move and couldn’t even though he was standing; it took his addled brain a second to work out that two burly men were holding him up by his arms, which were secured in front of him with a zip-tie._

_“Oh good, you’re awake,” Walsh said, his humorless voice enough to make Mac’s head snap up—bad idea, since it set the world spinning again. “Propofol’s a hell of a drug, huh? The dose we gave you means you probably won’t remember any of this right away—better for you in the long run if you ask me.”_

_From somewhere across the cleared space, Jack let out a growl, the scrape of wood on concrete indicating he was now tied to the chair previously occupied by Maxwell. “You son of a—”_

_A thump and a wheeze illustrated Walsh casually punching Jack in the solar plexus without Mac needing to see it. His eyes finally focused enough to see Maxwell curled up in a ball near some crates, shaking with fear; some big hard-faced guys in suits were chuckling at his fragility and muttering to each other in Russian. One of them was smoking a cigarette—not advisable in a place full of explosive material, but Mac had a feeling that was the least of his concerns._

_“Anyway,” Walsh continued, “I know you’re wondering what you’re doing here, Angus. I can see those gears turning in your head, just like your dad.”_

_Mac stared at a puddle of blood on the floor—Maxwell’s blood—and did his best to concentrate. “You… you’re making a deal. Selling something. Maxwell was your middleman, but something went wrong.”_

_“You’re damn right something went wrong.” Walsh was in front of Mac now, and used the butt of a handgun to tip up his chin. If Mac crossed his eyes, he could make out the Ruger logo embossed on the side of the grip. “Maxwell got sloppy, and that hacker friend of yours found out he was renting this place, so I wanted to know if he let anything else slip. Since things with that asshole Gomez fell through, I had to take some drastic measures to get myself into retirement.”_

_“Oh yeah?” Jack’s voice was tight, but only to Mac’s ears. “Like what? No, wait, don’t tell me—stock market?”_

_Walsh didn’t spare him a glance. “Don’t you ever get tired of being the comic relief, Dalton? The adults are talking.” He stared at Mac with the intensity of a madman. “Figure it out, genius. You know what I did.”_

_He was right—Mac knew instinctively_ exactly _what he’d done—but it didn’t make any sense. “There’s no way. KX7 never worked, I saw the videos.”_

 _“You’re right,_ James’s _formula for KX7 never worked. But when I brought the idea and the observations I’d made when your father forgot I was in the room—or when he figured I was too stupid to understand what was happening—to a_ real _friend of mine…” Walsh smiled, the expression downright nasty. “Well, to say he was interested in seeing the project to fruition would be an understatement.”_

_Behind Walsh, the man with the cigarette flicked it to the ground and stomped it out. In a thick Russian accent—something regional, maybe Chechen—he said, “What is that American expression? ‘Time is money’? Tsarnaev will not wait forever.”_

_Only Mac could see Walsh’s eye twitch with annoyance at the interruption. “Of course. I wouldn’t expect him to.” Reaching inside his shiny leather jacket, Walsh produced a large-bore syringe, the kind used to inject viscous medications and much bigger than the one used to give Mac the Propofol. It was full of a bluish-tinted liquid, and the needle on the end was as long as one of Mac’s fingers. “Angus, I’d like to introduce you to KX8.”_

_Mac stared at the syringe, gaze flicking briefly to Jack’s face, which was anxious under a mask of calm that only someone who didn’t know him would buy. He swallowed hard and forced himself to look Walsh in the eye. “You’re crazy. There’s no way it’ll work.”_

_Walsh shrugged. “Worked on the rats. Then it worked on the monkeys.” A curdled half-smile. “Maybe it’ll work on_ you _, too. You’re young, smart—”_

_“Hey, hey, wait a minute!” Jack exclaimed, tugging at his bonds, heedless of the many gun-wielding men surrounding them. “You don’t want to do that. What if it kills him, huh? How do you get your revenge on his old man then?”_

_Walsh paused. “Damn, that’s a good point. Tsarnaev’s scientist friend is good, but there_ is _a chance it won’t work on a human test subject…” He rotated slowly on his heel to face Jack. “Perhaps_ you’re _a better candidate. You’re former Delta Force, which is the kind of brutal training KX8 can’t manufacture, and if you die, Angus will_ never _forgive his father—yes, that’s what we’ll do.”_

 _“No,” Mac said, struggling against the men holding him and cursing his drug-laden muscles for not working properly. Walsh approached the chair, thumb poised on the plunger of the syringe. “_ No _, Jack—” Their eyes locked for a split second around Walsh’s bulky frame, and a shout rose in Mac’s throat when he saw the resignation—and the love—in Jack’s eyes. “No, no—let me_ go _, take me instead—”_

_Walsh cast a disgusted look over his shoulder. “Get him out of here.”_

_Mac was dragged away, thrashing and yelling panicked obscenities, tears escaping the corners of his eyes. Just as Walsh’s two goons threw him into the office cubicle, he saw Walsh’s arm come down, the syringe plunging into Jack, his agonized screaming ringing in Mac’s ears. Maxwell took that as his cue to try and make a break for the exit, and one of the Russians—Tsarnaev’s men, evidently—made the poor decision to take a potshot at his departing back._

_There was a second’s delay, and then the entire warehouse exploded into white flame._

 

~***~

 

The landing at Logan Airport was rough, but after waking up in a cold sweat from that horrific dream-slash-memory, Mac was glad to get out of the cramped quarters and recycled air of the plane and on solid ground. It was much colder on the East Coast than out West, so the first thing the three of them did was stop and buy overpriced winter coats, hats, and gloves from the airport mall. Mac paid for the apparel and Cage took charge of renting another car, a Honda CRV with four-wheel drive.

“Tsarnaev’s compound is outside the city,” Murdoc said once they were all buckled in, light snow flurries collecting on the windshield. “Nearest town to it is called Sudbury.”

Mac racked his brain for his mental map of the area, going back to his time at MIT in Cambridge. “That’s like a forty-minute drive from here if you take the Mass Pike.”

“I can make it in thirty, even in this weather,” Cage assured, pulling away from the curb and heading for the highway on-ramp. “But we need weapons.”

“I took the liberty of making a phone call before we left Reno,” Murdoc said, and what did it say about the situation if Mac only felt the barest hint of alarm at the idea of Murdoc acting independently in this situation? “We’ll be making a pit-stop in Newton. I have a contact there who’s willing to provide us with some firearms for the right price.”

Mac sighed, digging around in the back of his jeans for his wallet. “Better find an ATM, Cage. I have a feeling we’re going to need it.”

About a half-hour later, Cage and Murdoc were the proud new owners of Glock 22 handguns and M16s capable of firing at full auto, paid for in cash to a Winter Hill Gang affiliate whose name Mac deliberately did not learn. The snow fell faster as they got back on the Pike before they ditched it to take Route 27 into the little town of Sudbury, known as the hometown of Chris Evans and not much else.

Murdoc gave Cage turn-by-turn directions that took them through town and out the other side, until they were on a narrow two-lane road surrounded by tall pines and oaks. Driveways were scarce and marked by ornate mailboxes and gated fences, suggesting the residents were well-off financially. They passed a sign for something called the Pantry Brook Wildlife Management Area, and Murdoc instructed Cage to keep driving, but also for her and Mac to take a look at a double-wide driveway surrounded by a reinforced concrete fence and a spike-topped gate.

Cage drove down to a curve in the road and parked them on the shoulder, far enough away from the gate to be out of view of any cameras. “Clearly this Tsarnaev is security conscious,” she said. “What’s it like on the inside?”

“Huge and well-fortified—five car garage, multiple outbuildings, and a guard station about halfway up the driveway,” Murdoc said. “Not to mention the snipers on the roof and the landmines buried in the yard.”

Mac stared at the dashboard, thinking hard. “Our best bet would probably be to circle around through the woods, maybe come at it from the back? I’m sure the front of the fence is well-maintained, but people forget about what they don’t see.” He checked out the snow levels near the road. “If I can rig us up some snowshoes, we can avoid triggering the landmines. As for the snipers—”

A series of sharp pops cut him off, the sound unmistakable to all of them: silenced gunfire, and there was only one logical place for it to come from. Mac was out of the car in an instant, knowing without looking that Cage and Murdoc piled out behind him, the three of them racing into the trees and heading toward the compound. Snow flew up around Mac’s boots as he dodged trees and hopped fallen branches, only stopping when he ran up against the eight-foot-high concrete barrier surrounding Tsarnaev’s property. The gunshots were louder from here and increased in number with each passing moment, ten weapons cracking against a backdrop of confused, panicked shouting in Russian.

Mac turned to Murdoc, blue eyes wild with adrenaline. “What are they saying?”

Murdoc cocked his head and listened. “Something’s wrong in the house… the men outside are abandoning their posts to help the interior guards.” Another few garbled words and his eyebrows rose. “They’re talking about a prisoner, but MacGyver—”

Mac was already making for the nearest tree, a sturdy-looking oak that unlike its counterparts toward the front of the complex did not have its branches trimmed back regularly; a thick one hung far enough over the top of the concrete fence to be useful. He’d been climbing trees since he was a kid and Mac had no trouble shimmying his way up its trunk and out on to the branch, checking briefly to make sure there were no guards nearby before dropping down into the backyard. Multiple sets of footprints from security patrols told him there weren’t any landmines in the area, and he crouched behind a thicket of holly bushes and waited.

A moment later Cage landed on his left, Murdoc on his right.

“Next time fill us in on the plan before you play squirrel,” Murdoc griped, the M16 strapped to his shoulder and his Glock held down near his leg.

On Mac’s other side, Cage mirrored Murdoc’s and surveyed the area. “I don’t see Tsarnaev’s men—they must all be inside.” The _pop-pop-pop_ of gunfire was decreasing, but there was no way to know what that meant without getting closer. “I don’t see any snipers, do you?”

Mac risked a peek at the roof and shook his head. “No, nothing. Guess they went inside too.” He hopped out of his crouch and over the bushes, hustling around a covered in-ground swimming pool toward the giant McMansion, doing his best to avoid window sightlines. When he reached the door and tried the knob, it was unlocked; it was amazing how arrogant people became about home security when they paid a few guys to stand around with guns all day.

Cage put her hand on his shoulder. “Let me go first.” She flashed him one of her half-smiles. “Jack would have my head if you got shot trying to rescue him.”

She took point, handgun raised, and Mac followed her, Murdoc covering the rear in case they were wrong about the outside guards. A glance back at the psychopath told Mac there was something he was dying to say, but talking could give away their position early and that wasn’t something any of them were willing to risk.

They found the first body in the dining room, sprawled on the floor at the far end of a ridiculously long antique table, a blood streak running the length of its top like a racing stripe. The body appeared to have been a guard, until someone did him the favor of breaking all his ribs with such force that the splintered bone could be seen poking out of his back. An M4 lay on the ground next to the corpse, snapped in half like a child’s toy.

Dread uncoiled inside Mac’s guts like a snake. He lingered on the body for a second longer than Cage before forcing himself forward, following red smears of blood down a hallway. Puddles of red began to show up the closer they got to the next big room, which turned out to be the living area. It was one of those sunken-floor deals attached to a huge the kitchen, and the entire space was littered with dead men. They were fractured apart in ways Mac hadn’t seen since Afghanistan, where he’d watched bones broken and organs pulverized by concussive blasts. Only to his knowledge there were no bombs here, which meant…

 _Can’t think about that now_ , Mac thought, his mind deliberately trying to shield him from a nightmarish truth even as his hindbrain recoiled in recognition of danger. _Find Jack, worry about the rest later._

Into the next hallway and the gunshots were gone, replaced by blood-curdling sounds coming from somewhere beneath their feet. Cage started moving faster, clearing doorway after doorway, kicking severed limbs that looked like they were ripped off bodies out of their path, her boots soaked with blood inside of a minute. The whole way they didn’t encounter one live guard or household employee, only their remains; every single one of them was armed, and while there were bullet holes in some of the walls, it hadn’t seemed to matter to whoever killed them.

They rounded a corner and found Jonah Walsh sprawled on the floor near a half-open door to the basement. He was face-down in a pool of blood, and Mac thought he was dead like the others; a shuffle and a groan said differently, and when Walsh pushed himself up on an elbow and caught sight of them, his eyes went wide like saucers. His face was burned on one side from the ammonium nitrate explosion, like he’d turned away at the last second and barely made it out, only to wind up here.

“Angus?” he whispered, blood dribbling from his mouth. The coppery puddle underneath him seemed to be coming from compound fractures to both legs, shin bones sticking out of his skin up past his knees. “Angus, you shouldn’t have come—for God’s sake, don’t go down there—”

Mac calmly walked up to Walsh and kicked him in the face, the steel toe of his boot connecting squarely with Walsh’s temple and knocking him out cold. Whatever else that bastard had to say, he wasn’t interested in hearing it. He squeezed his eyes shut, took in a shuddering breath, and tried to brace himself for whatever awaited him down those stairs.

 _You know the truth_ , the old, primitive part of him whispered, the part he’d had to tamp down countless times to do his job so other people wouldn’t die. _You know what you’re going to see_.

He turned and looked at Cage and Murdoc. “I need to go down there alone.”

Cage stared at him incredulously. “Are you crazy? No way in hell am I—”

But Murdoc stepped in, tapping her arm with the barrel of his M16 to get her attention. “He’s right. If you or I walk down there, we’ll be torn apart. That much is obvious from what we just saw.”

Mac saw the moment it clicked for Cage. “You think _Jack_ did all this? How?”

“I remembered the rest of what happened in Bakersfield when I was asleep on the plane,” Mac said, doing his best to ignore the animalistic sounds of pain coming from the basement. “Walsh dosed Jack with a new version of KX7, one that worked. They brought him here and he must’ve gotten loose, and once he was out they weren’t able to stop him. But I’m afraid if we all troop down the stairs together, Jack might… react badly.”

“From the sounds of things he has Tsarnaev down there,” Murdoc pointed out, nodding toward the door. “I’d go down there sooner rather than later, before Dalton comes looking for fresh meat.”

Mac made a face at Murdoc’s choice of words, but he agreed. He shot what he hoped was a reassuring smile in Cage’s direction before slipping through the gap between the door and the jam. The lights in the basement were on, so Mac had a perfect view of the bloody drag marks marring the stairs; teeth littered the floor at the bottom, and Mac only had to walk cautiously around a furnace and a water heater before he found Jack.

Despite the situation, the sight of his partner was enough to make Mac’s knees weak with relief. Jack’s back was to him, but there was no mistaking his buzzed-down hair and the broad expanse of his shoulders. He was dressed only in a pair of dirty jeans, and judging from the purple-black bruises encircling his wrists Mac surmised that before he got loose, Jack had been hanging by his arms from the chains rigged up to the floor joists overhead. His feet were bare and blackened by grime, oddly small against the cold concrete.

Since Jack was in the way Mac couldn’t see Tsarnaev, but he could hear him, broken English shaky and full of pain, “For the last time, I do not know what happened to your partner!”

“And for the last time, I don’t believe you,” Jack said, and he sounded… different. Exhausted, yes, but it was something deeper—it took Mac a moment to recognize the quality as the same type of agony he’d felt when he’d thought his partner was dead. “If you don’t stop lying to me, I’ll have to go back upstairs and break more of Walsh’s bones, but let’s be realistic, he might be dead from blood loss by now.” Jack raised an arm and pushed forward, making some chains rattled; he had Tsarnaev strung up the same way he’d been until recently. “Which means I’ll have to walk all the way back down here and start breaking _your_ bones unless you tell me what I want to know.” He paused, head cocking in a way that could only be described as predatory. “Thought I killed all you fellas—how’d you make it down the stairs?”

Mac licked his dry lips, and when he spoke he couldn’t stop his voice from breaking: “I thought about rigging up a zip-line, but that seemed like too much.”

Jack froze before turning around slowly, shock and something else—a more visceral reaction—written openly across his face. His dark eyes went wide at the sight of his partner, like he hadn’t trusted hearing his voice alone. “Mac?”

“Yeah, buddy, it’s me,” Mac said, an involuntary grin breaking out on his face despite the situation. He took two steps forward but stopped when Jack almost stumbled into Tsarnaev in his haste to retreat. “Jack, what’s wrong?”

A hoarse imitation of a laugh emerged from Jack’s mouth. “What’s _wrong_?” he repeated, doubling over like he was in pain, but not the physical kind; every inch of him, from the hunched shoulders to the way his fists were clenched suggested emotional hurt. “Where should I start? First off, I thought you were dead—oh, and Walsh injected me with that KX8 crap and now I can crush a guy’s skull with my bare hands…” He trailed off, horror flashing on his features. “Which you’ve already seen if you’re down here.”

Mac shook his head, taking another step forward without thinking. “Jack, I don’t care about that. Look, Cage and Murdoc are upstairs, we need to—”

“ _Murdoc’s_ here?” Jack exclaimed. He rubbed at his face with a bloodstained hand, and when his eyes were covered Mac risked another step, so now they were only about a foot apart. “Christ, Mac, what did you do?”

“… Improvised?” Mac smiled a little when his usage of Jack’s least-favorite word drew a chuckle from his partner. He sobered quickly and reached out a tentative hand—and managed not to flinch when Jack’s fingers snapped shut around his wrist like a vise, at a speed that was too quick for a normal person. “Show-off.”

Jack growled in frustration, his grip tight enough to make a point but not enough to actually hurt. “This isn’t a joke, Mac, I’m—I’m different now.”

 “Maybe, but not in the ways that matter,” Mac argued. He gestured with his free hand, first at the carnage up the stairs and then at Tsarnaev. “You could’ve taken out a couple of guards and left, KX8 or no KX8—but instead you stayed here to try and get them to tell you what happened to _me_.” Mac got right in Jack’s face, their chests almost brushing, and he bent their connected arms at an odd angle to keep Jack from backing away again. “That’s selfless, and brave, and maybe a little stupid, exactly like the Jack Dalton I know.”

Jack ducked his head, but not quickly enough for Mac to miss the tears in his eyes. “You’re not gonna back down, are you?”

Mac’s mouth quirked up on one side. “When have I ever done that?”

A wet-sounding cough caused both of them to look in Tsarnaev’s direction. The Chechen mobster was young for his rank—probably Mac’s age—which made sense considering his father’s untimely death. He wore the rumpled, stained remains of an expensive three-piece suit, and Mac thought he might be handsome in a cold way without all the blood, contusions, and what looked like a fractured cheekbone. He spat out some blood on the floor, near where his feet swung a couple inches off the ground. “Oh, isn’t this sweet! Tell me, blond one—are you the candidate Walsh was _supposed_ to bring me, instead of this Hesperus wreck?”

Jack looked at Mac for clarification, and belatedly let go of his wrist but didn’t put distance between them. In a stage whisper, he asked, “What the hell’s he talking about?”

“It’s a poem by Longfellow—angsty, unhappy ending,” Mac said. He moved closer to Tsarnaev, approaching from the left while Jack took the right and trying to ignore how their ability to communicate without words being intact made him want to cry. Instead, he inspected Tsarnaev’s limp form from top to bottom before electing to rabbit-punch him in the kidney. “Did you only manufacture one syringe of KX8?”

Tsarnaev snorted, eyes rolling back in his head briefly before he looked at Mac. “Yes, we only made one syringe, but if you’re half as smart as Walsh says you’ll figure out why that doesn’t matter.” His pain-filled glare turned in Jack’s direction. “Your friend here is a walking KX8 factory now. Spin his blood down and you’d have enough of that drug to make your own army.”

Jack went white, and he looked like he might be sick.

Warning bells rang in the back of Mac’s head. He didn’t doubt the validity of what Tsarnaev said, instead he was concerned about what that implied for life after this basement. When word got out about what had happened to Jack—and it would eventually, no matter how careful Mac had been—he’d have a target on his back for the rest of his life. Jack was formidable before the KX8, but even added strength, speed, and reflexes would only get him so far before someone worked out a way to bring him down.

While Mac ran calculations about their next move, Tsarnaev kept talking: “If I were you I wouldn’t fight too much when your government friends come looking for you. It’s not as if you’re anything but an abomination—”

Before he knew what he’d done, Tsarnaev’s chin was touching his chest in unconsciousness and Mac’s hand hurt. “Jack—”

“He ain’t wrong, Mac,” Jack whispered, and he sounded so sad that it made Mac want to wake Tsarnaev up just to hit him again; violent impulses usually weren’t his thing, but a lot had changed in the past forty-eight hours or so. “And they _are_ gonna come for me, and they’ll kill me or try and use me as a lab rat. I might be better off to—”

“ _Don’t_ ,” Mac ground out, because he couldn’t bear it if Jack finished that hopeless thought. “Just don’t. We’ll figure something out—we always do.” One piece of the puzzle clicked into place, and Mac fished out his burner phone. “I’m going to record a message for Matty explaining what happened—not the KX8 part, don’t look at me like that—and I’ll send it to her email. That should buy us some time to get you somewhere safe.” Before he touched the record button, he stared hard at Jack but softened his tone when he said, “I didn’t give up on you, Jack. Don’t give up on yourself.”

“Shit, stop trying to make me cry, would you?” Despite his half-joking tone, Jack swiped at his eyes and waved a hand at him. “Go ahead, do it.”

They both recorded the message for Matty, with Mac doing most of the narrating but Jack piping in to add (mostly fabricated) details about his kidnapping and subsequent escape. Mac knew there was no way Matty would buy the back third of their tale, but lying was the only way to keep the KX8 secret from becoming common knowledge at the Phoenix. Thinking of the Phoenix made Mac think of his father, and he replayed the message before he sent it to Matty as an attachment, wanting to make damn sure they hadn’t let anything slip.

Mac sighed once the message was sent, shaking out his sore hand and looking up at Jack through his greasy bangs; Jack might’ve been the one who was kidnapped, but Mac knew he probably looked (and smelled) just as rough. “Let’s get out of here, yeah?”

“Sounds good,” Jack said, something close to a smile gracing his face.

They had a mimed argument about who was going up the stairs first, but eventually Jack reluctantly let Mac take the lead—this was his mission, and it would be him Murdoc and Cage would be expecting first.

Which was why Mac was the one to come face-to-face with Murdoc holding a gun to Cage’s head.


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey guys! Sorry this one took a while, but I wanted to get it exactly right! Any questions you still have after this chapter WILL be answered in the epilogue, which I'm hoping to get written and posted after Friday's episode, you know, after we all cry and scream at our televisions/laptops. :P I'm also thinking about making this into something of a series - you'll see why after the epilogue goes up - so I'd like to hear your feedback on that idea! And of course if anyone wants to hop on the KX8!Jack train with their own fic, you're more than welcome, but drop me a link so I can read it!!! This was beta read and edited by me, so any mistakes are 100% my own. Fair warning, this is about 20% plot that devolves into smut pretty quickly, but again, I DO plan on answering all plot-related questions in the epilogue! As always, let me know what you think!

“Careful, Angus,” Murdoc said, his arm tightening fractionally around Cage’s chest. The hand pressing the Glock to her temple was rock steady. “That pit bull of yours so much as looks at me wrong and lovely Samantha loses her head.”

Mac felt Jack tense behind his shoulder. “Great to see you too, asshole.”

“I see that serum’s done nothing for your sense of decorum, Dalton. Love the outfit, by the way. Very _Tarzan_.” Murdoc glanced briefly in Jack’s direction before turning his attention back to Mac. “While I think the interior decorating could use some work, the acoustics in this house are wonderful—specifically, they allowed me and Cage here to listen in on your whole conversation.”

Cage twitched against Murdoc’s grip. “Guys, I’m sorry—” She hissed when the gun barrel bit into her skin and went silent, both hands grabbing Murdoc’s forearm for balance. She also very purposefully met Mac’s gaze before dropping her eyes in the direction of Walsh’s unconscious form.

Jack must’ve caught the move because he spoke up, drawing Murdoc’s attention away from Mac again. “Can we skip the evil villain monologue and cut to the chase? What do you want?”

In the few seconds he had without Murdoc’s scrutiny, Mac glanced down at Walsh and saw the flat black rectangle of a handgun butt sticking out from under his hip. He must’ve dropped it when Jack took him down earlier, and if it was under his body there was a good chance it was undamaged; it could also be full of blood and unable to fire, but that was a risk they’d have to take. Mac looked back up—Murdoc’s eyes were still on Jack—and gave Cage a miniscule nod, indicating he understood the plan.

“To put it in layman’s terms, I want you, Dalton.” Murdoc rolled his head around, reconsidering his phrasing. “Well, not _you_ , more like the potentially billion-dollar drug pumping through your veins. Come with me willingly, and everybody walks away. Don’t, and your favorite Australian becomes a paint splatter.”

“Hmmm, I don’t know about that,” Mac said, a fraction louder than normal, in order to cover up the sound of his boot scraping the gun out from under Walsh. “I think my favorite Australian is Chris Hemsworth.”

Jack made an indignant sound and pulled at his elbow, albeit much more gently than he normally would have. “Are you kidding me right now? You’re seriously gonna pick Hemsworth over Heath Ledger? Or Hugh Jackman?”

Mac pretended like he was debating it, pushing his tongue against the backs of his front teeth. “Well, Ledger’s dead—”

“God rest his soul,” Jack interjected.

“Yeah, and Jackman’s not my type. I mean, when I see him all I picture is the Wolverine, and who the hell wants to deal with all that _hair_?” Mac had the gun concealed under his boot, and if Jack bent down quickly he could grab it. “Eric Bana’s a no-go, and Nicole Kidman’s kind of— _now_!”

Cage used her grip on Murdoc’s forearm as leverage, pulling him off balance and bringing her head back fast and hard at the same time. There was a loud crunch as her skull connected with Murdoc’s nose, and while he did pull the trigger on the handgun, Cage was out of the way and the bullet slammed into the nearest wall. Jack dove for the gun while Mac lunged for one of the M16s a bit further away; by the time both of them straightened up, Cage had whipped around, grabbed Murdoc’s head in both hands and drove her knee into his face. He toppled like a statue, broken nose adding to the bloody sea that was the floor.

Jack whistled. “Damn—I’d almost forgotten what a badass you are.”

Cage winked at him, striding up and giving Jack a hug with confidence Mac envied; he guessed it was easier to act platonic when you weren’t in love with someone who happened to be shirtless. “It’s the hair. Natural sheen distracts from the badassery.” She picked up the other M16 and toed at Murdoc with her boot. “What do we do with him?”

“Leave him here, I guess,” Mac said. “Doesn’t look like he’ll be moving again for a while.” He glanced out the window and saw the beginnings of blue-and-white police lights flashing against the snow-covered treetops. “We’ve gotta get out of here. Come on, back the way we came.” He stripped off his own coat, thought for a moment, and pulled off Walsh’s boots—they were close to Jack’s size even if they were soaked in blood. He pushed the items into Jack’s arms. “Put these on, it’s cold out.”

Jack did as he was told, momentarily getting the gun stuck in the sleeve of the coat and flailing it around. “What about you?”

Mac grabbed a couple things from the living room—including a pair of curtains and a solid marble sculpture of an elephant—before heading for the back of the house. He tried not to look at Jack in that whole time, knowing the sight of his partner in Mac’s coat would only add to his already inappropriate thoughts. “I’m not at risk of getting frostbite. Let’s go.”

 

~***~

 

Getting out of Tsarnaev’s complex proved to be marginally more difficult than getting in, but Mac made it work. He tied the curtains into a rope and used the heavy elephant as a counterweight when he threw it over the concrete fence. Cage was the lightest of the three of them and went over first to test it, and when the elephant didn’t come back to smack her in the face Mac sent Jack up next and then went over himself. Thankfully, the CRV was exactly where they left it, and as soon as the three of them piled in Cage gunned it around the curve in the road, slowing down only when there was a comfortable distance between them and any police officers.

After some deliberation (read: bickering) they decided a more populated area would be the best place to blend in while Mac assessed Jack’s condition, so Cage hopped on Route 20 and headed east into Waltham, stopping at a Holiday Inn near the interstate in case they needed to make a quick getaway. She went in to rent the room, and Mac and Jack gathered the bags and met her at the side entrance once she had keycards.

Cage booked them two connecting rooms on the top floor, each with a king-sized bed and its own bathroom. All in all, the whole suite looked exactly like rooms in every other Holiday Inn—decorated in tan, white, and dark green, clean but not spotless, generic artwork on the walls. The room Mac and Jack shared had a picture window with a view of what Mac learned from the in-room city brochure was the Cambridge Reservoir, formerly Hobbs Pond, which supplied drinking water to (you guessed it) the city of Cambridge. Maybe if he filled his head with enough irrelevant facts about the local topography, Mac could forget that in a few hours he’d have to sleep in the same bed with Jack.

Speaking of Jack, he took off Mac’s borrowed coat and tossed it on a nearby chair, kicking off Walsh’s crusty boots and lobbing them in the trash can. He unceremoniously flopped face-down on the bed and groaned in contentment. “Oh my God, an actual _mattress_.” His words were muffled thanks to the overly-fluffy duvet, but Mac got the gist. “I’m never moving again.”

Mac sat on the edge of the bed and took off his own boots—which had been glued to his feet since he left the hospital—and let out a relieved sigh. When Jack made a noise that sounded suspiciously like what Riley called his “old man snores”, Mac poked him in the ribs. “Hey, don’t fall asleep on me yet. You’ve gotta take a shower and then let me look you over. I want to make sure the KX8 didn’t do anything too funky.”

Jack snorted, turning his head slightly to peer at Mac out of one brown eye. “What exactly counts as ‘too funky’, hoss? Every ache and pain I’ve had since I was younger than you is gone, my hearing’s clear as a bell, and let’s not forget the whole crushing skulls with my bare hands thing.”

Mac’s gaze dropped to his own hands. He’d always thought of as too big for the rest of him, fingers long and spindly like a spider’s legs. “Just... humor me, okay?” he said in a small voice, eyes flicking to Jack’s face briefly before staring at the bed’s padded headboard. “I need to know you’re okay.”

Cage rapped on the connecting door before Jack could respond, letting herself in with her coat draped over her arm and the keys to the CRV in hand. “Hey, I thought I’d duck out and get some clothes, maybe pick up something for dinner.” She wrinkled her nose. “Christ, I can’t decide which one of you smells worse. Take showers already.”

Jack sniffed himself experimentally and winced. “Okay, you’ve got me there.” He rolled off the bed, clapping Mac’s shoulder on his way by—again, much more gently than normal. “You heard the lady. I’ll be out in ten and you can play Nurse Ratchet all you want.”

Once the bathroom door was shut, Cage came over to Mac, bending at the waist to look him in the eye. “You all right?”

Mac let out a chuckle and shook his head. “Not hardly. I’m just glad Jack’s in one piece.” He reached up for Cage’s hand, fingers curling around the one that held the car keys. “Thanks for all of this, Sam. I owe you one.”

Cage leaned down and kissed the top of his head, squeezing his hand once before letting go. “If I remember right, somebody told me that’s what family does for each other.” She straightened up and headed for the door. “I’ll buy some more burner phones and call Riley, let her know Jack’s okay. He can tell her the rest when he’s ready.” She paused with the door open to glance back over her shoulder. “And Mac? If you’re ever gonna tell Jack how you feel, now’s the time.”

Mac blinked in shock at that statement, and in the moment when his eyes were closed, she left.

 

~***~

 

A shower sounded like an excellent idea, so Mac hopped in the one in Cage’s room and gave himself a much-needed scrub until everything didn’t smell like airplane. He resolutely did not think about Jack showering in the next room over, and when he got out he shook out his hair like a dog before dressing in his backup set of Walmart clothes, which was another button-down flannel shirt and cheap jeans.

His hair was still in his face as he walked back into his and Jack’s room, so he didn’t immediately see the problem when Jack said, “I guess we didn’t really think this shower thing through, huh?”

Mac looked up, eyes widening comically when he realized his partner was sitting on the bed in nothing but a flimsy hotel bath towel; the Holiday Inn was great for certain things, but providing robes was not one of them. He’d seen Jack shirtless before—hell, they’d probably seen each other naked more than most couples—but now that the worry and adrenaline had mostly worked their way out of his system, Mac was acutely aware of two things: how goddamn hot Jack was, and how his hopeless years-long crush had twisted itself up into something more over the past few days.

“Uh,” Mac said intelligently. When Jack blinked at him in confusion, Mac coughed like he was getting a prostate exam from the doc at Phoenix and made himself move forward, asking, “How are your wrists?”

Jack lifted his arms and eyed the angry bruises where his shackles were back in Tsarnaev’s basement. “Been better, I guess?”

Mac shook his head, crouching down in front of Jack and taking one of his forearms in a careful grip. He deliberately did not look anywhere but at the bruising; instead of getting uglier up close it was already fading at the edges, even though Jack had only been out of the shackles for a few hours. “I don’t mean that—how do they _feel_? Do they hurt like you’d think it would by looking at them?”

Jack’s answer was slow and suspicious. “No, they don’t.”

Mac’s eyes flitted upward, methodically cataloguing for injuries and not seeing as many as he’d expected—that was both a relief and a testament to how well the KX8’s healing factor worked. There were some bruises around Jack’s ribs and trailing toward his back, but those were even more faded than the ones on his wrists. Same story for Jack’s face, including a black eye that was already yellow and green instead of purple. Rough patches of skin indicated healing burns from the explosion at the warehouse, but despite being chemical in nature Mac didn’t think they would scar much based on how good they looked. Other than what looked like a shallow slice from a piece of shrapnel, Jack was… fine.

Mac extended a shaking hand and touched the cut, which was about as long as his middle finger and would have needed stitches on anyone else; on Jack, it was scabbed over and had begun to knit itself together. Quietly, vision blurring with tears, Mac whispered aloud the thing that had haunted the back of his mind since this whole shit show started: “I was afraid you were dead.”

A beat passed before Jack’s hand rose, touched the side of Mac’s face like it was something precious. “Hey, hey—when I woke up in that basement I thought the same thing about you,” Jack said, his tone uncharacteristically soft, an undercurrent to it that Mac couldn’t quite place. “But I’m not dead, and neither are you, and as long as you’re not gonna hightail it away from me in the other direction—”

Mac made a choked-off sound that was almost a laugh. He felt something give on his face, and he knew he’d shown too much of what he felt to Jack but he was too tired and strung-out to care. “Believe me, there’s no way I’d do that.” He stood up too quickly and took a step back, a bitter parody of what Jack had done at Tsarnaev’s place. “You might want to run from _me_ now, though.”

Jack stood too, the towel slipping down an inch and Mac hated himself for noticing that. But there wasn’t anywhere to look that wasn’t occupied by Jack, because his partner had taken two strides forward and was in his space. The only sounds in the room was their breathing and the occasional rumble from the elevator.

“And why would I want to do that?” Jack asked, low and cautious. “Because if I just saw what I think I did on your face, Mac, there is no earthly way I’d run from you.”

Mac’s eyes snapped up, and he was dumbstruck when he saw the same amount of love in Jack’s expression now that he had back during those awful moments in the warehouse. But it wasn’t the platonic affection Mac had thought it was before; this was something else, something passionate and raw that matched the warm fist that gripped his heart every time he thought about his partner.

There was no way Mac wasn’t kissing Jack after seeing that.

It wasn’t the most elegant first kiss imaginable, since Mac went in a little hard and sort of knocked their noses together, but Jack’s hand came up to cup his jaw and reset the angle. A sigh escaped Mac at the feeling of Jack’s warm, chapped lips against his own, and he wrapped his arms around his partner’s neck, stubble on the back of Jack’s neck tickling the skin of his arms. Jack groaned against Mac’s mouth, nipping at his lower lip for permission he didn’t really need to ask for; Mac opened to him immediately, a pleasant shiver running up his back when Jack’s hands closed around his hips.

Mac wasn’t sure how it happened, but the next thing he was aware of besides Jack licking over his palate was the solid thump of his back hitting the wall near the bed. He broke the kiss to breathe (stupid lungs) and couldn’t help but whimper a little when Jack’s lips trailed down his chin to his neck, biting lightly, one of his bare thighs nudging its way between Mac’s. Even through the denim, Mac could feel the heat coming off Jack like a furnace, the solid muscle of his leg grinding perfectly against Mac’s already half-hard cock. They made out for a while before Jack tugged at Mac’s shirt, which wouldn’t come off without undoing the buttons. He grunted in frustration, and to Mac’s amazement, pulled back far enough to rip it open. Buttons scattered around the room, one pinging off the lampshade before cracking the glass in one of the room’s shitty paintings.

Mac made an embarrassing sound, eyes slamming shut as his head thumped against the wall. “Less than five minutes in and you already know one of my kinks, great.” When Jack didn’t respond, he cracked open an eye, and found his partner staring at his chest. “Jack, what’s—oh.”

Light fingertips touched the largest row of sutures, which Mac had promptly forgotten about as soon as he got out of the shower since they didn’t hurt nearly as much as they had earlier. “Jesus Christ, Mac,” Jack said, concern bleeding in over the breathlessness of arousal. “How bad were you hurt?” He caught sight of the scabbed-over mess that Mac had torn open back at the jail and pointed at it. “And what the hell is _that_?”

“They’re from the warehouse,” Mac explained, suddenly sheepish when Jack’s sharp eyes focused on him. “I might’ve… flown through a window and caught some glass in my chest? The ugly one I tore open when I needed to break Murdoc out of prison.”

Jack was momentarily speechless, a rare thing. He blinked at Mac a few times before shaking his head in equal parts exasperation and fondness. “You know, for a genius you can be a real dumbass.” He slid an arm around Mac’s waist and pressed a kiss to the corner of his mouth, three-day beard scraping Mac’s cheek. “Is it too early to call you _my_ dumbass?”

Mac laughed, a clear sound he hadn’t heard himself make in ages. He loved the feeling of Jack pressed along every inch of him, loved that the arm curled around him was stronger than it should’ve been, loved the way they fit together like nothing was different, even if everything was. “No, I’d like that.” He closed his eyes when Jack kissed him again, but they flew open a second later when he felt his feet leave the ground. “What the—”

Jack looked up at him with a grin, lust and mischief on his face. His hands slid to grip under Mac’s thighs, holding him up against the wall with seemingly no effort. “Guess this KX8 stuff’s good for something after all.”

Mac couldn’t help but grin back at him, wrapping his long legs around Jack’s waist like he did it all the time… and used his foot to knock the towel to the floor.

“Now that’s just dirty,” Jack declared, but he didn’t sound like he minded. They went back to kissing, while Jack’s gun-calloused fingers worked at getting Mac’s jeans open. This proved to be a difficult task, so Jack swore against Mac’s mouth and ripped those too, right down the middle like they were made of paper. “Stupid fucking pants.”

“Yeah, pants are terrible,” Mac agreed, trying to catch his breath and failing miserably. He hadn’t bothered with boxers so with the jeans in pieces he was fully exposed, and the way Jack froze combined with the look on his face—desire, mixed with razor edges of the predatory thing from the basement—was enough to make Mac blush from his cheeks to his slightly-filleted chest. “Uh… Jack? You still with me?”

“Course I am, darlin’,” was Jack’s response, like he had to think to get the words out. His gaze ran a slow trail up from Mac’s groin to his eyes, taking in every detail along the way, one hand leaving Mac’s leg temporarily to cup his face. “Just wondering how in the hell I got so lucky.”

Mac turned his head to kiss the inside of Jack’s wrist and said, teasing despite the tightness of arousal in his gut, “Who’s the dumbass now?”

Jack hummed contemplatively, dropping his other hand from Mac’s leg to wrap around his cock, fully erect by now and leaking against his abs. He was holding Mac against the wall with his body and nothing else. “Still you.”

Mac clamped down on a particularly throaty moan before it could escape, the scratchy wallpaper at his back reminding him they were in a hotel and the last thing they needed was somebody calling downstairs to complain about the noise. His hips gave an involuntary thrust into Jack’s grip, which was just rough enough to make his mouth go dry. Staring at the ceiling, Mac grasped around for coherent thought, because he knew what he wanted and he was damn well going to get it. “Please tell me you didn’t rip the back of my jeans.”

“Uh… I don’t think so?” Jack’s strokes didn’t falter on Mac’s cock even as he contorted himself downward to pick up the ruined pants, which was far hotter than it had any right to be. “Why, what did—you son of a bitch.” A pause. “No offense to your momma.”

“Jack, please don’t talk about my mom now,” Mac said, biting his tongue to hold in a groan when Jack let go of his dick in favor of tearing into the packet of lube that had been living in Mac’s back pocket since the airport. At Jack’s questioning look, he shrugged, fingers absently running across the hair near the curve of Jack’s ear. “Lube’s good for a lot of things, man—I didn’t figure on you busting out of your own cuffs.”

“I’d _almost_ buy that,” Jack drawled, his conversational tone poor cover for the dual sensation of hot skin and cool lube trailing over Mac’s hole. “Except I know for a fact you changed your clothes after you showered—so you took the lube out of your old pants and put it in your new ones.” He smiled sweetly and slid his finger in up to the first bump of knuckle, leaning in to nip at Mac’s jaw. “Thought you were a realist, not an optimist.”

“You should _not_ be this coherent,” Mac grumbled, hands moving to grip Jack’s shoulders as he forced himself to relax, gasping when he felt that finger push deeper. Behind Jack’s back, Mac’s toes curled as Jack worked his finger in and out for a minute before adding another, all while his mouth laved at the birthmark on Mac’s neck like he wanted to eat it. “God, Jack—”

“I know,” Jack murmured against his throat, and judging from the hardness of his cock brushing against Mac’s own, he did understand. A third finger joined the first two, and Jack’s lips brushed Mac’s cheek when he hissed at the burn. “Sorry, sorry—you want me to stop?”

“If you stop I’ll kill you,” Mac gritted out, only half-joking. That third finger might’ve burned, but it also tapped his prostate, which was enough to make him jolt up the wall another inch. And _that_ was a reminder that Jack was barely expending any effort to hold him up, and that they were going to fuck like this. “Go ahead. I’m ready.”

Jack removed his fingers with a loud _squelch_ and asked, “Condoms? Oh God, please tell me—”

“I’m clean,” Mac assured, blinking the sweat out of his eyes. He pulled Jack in for a kiss just because he could, every nerve in his body screaming for more. “Had my physical a couple months ago. And I’m pretty sure KX8 can kill STDs.”

“Good point,” Jack said. He fucked around with Mac’s ruined jeans for a moment to find another packet of lube, and the next thing Mac knew he’d slicked himself up and was guiding his cock to Mac’s entrance with one hand, the other squeezing Mac’s waist with enough pressure to hurt, but Mac didn’t care. “You sure?” Whatever bitchy look crossed Mac’s face was enough to make Jack snort out a laugh, so it must’ve been a good one. “Alrighty then.”

Mac was about to make a comment about Jack’s bad taste in dirty talk, but he was busy moaning at the stretching fullness of Jack’s cock pushing inside him. It was too much and not enough at the same time, Mac’s arms wrapping around Jack’s shoulders as his legs tightened around his hips in the world’s dirtiest bear hug. Once he was fully sheathed, Jack went stock-still, his forehead resting on Mac’s collarbone and every muscle in his body strained with tension.

Mac took a moment to get himself under control, his cock throbbing in time with the pulse pounding at his temples. He scraped his fingernails through the short hair on the back of Jack’s head and shuddered when it made Jack’s hips twitch. He gave an experimental thrust down with his own hips and chuckled when the slow drag of it made Jack bite him in retaliation. “Jeez, okay, you can move!”

Jack’s response was a grunt that sounded like he said _holy fuck_ under his breath (Mac hoped that was a good thing), and then he planted his feet and just… _went_ for it. For the first dozen or so thrusts they made a vague attempt to kiss, but sucking on each other’s tongues lost some of its appeal when it drew blood. Instead, Jack moved in closer, hands sliding in between Mac’s shoulder blades and the wall, no doubt skinning his knuckles but giving him better leverage to piston his hips without running the risk of either dropping Mac or giving him a concussion.

As far as Mac was concerned, a fucking wrecking ball could’ve smashed into the hotel and it wouldn’t have mattered, he felt that good. He was babbling and he knew it but found he didn’t care, because Jack had heard him talk nonsense before (he never let Mac live down the time he accidentally got a contact high from setting a weed farm on fire and repeatedly told Jack how pretty his eyes were in the moonlight) and didn’t judge him for it. Plus if his partner’s whispered praises were anything to go by—including one _love you so much, Mac_ that made him flush from his ears to his toes—Jack was enjoying himself.

But between their pent-up sexual tension and the almost scary amount of times Jack managed to nail Mac’s prostate dead-on, it wasn’t going to last forever, and pretty soon Mac was shouting Jack’s name and clawing his shoulders raw, spurting hard up his own abs. Jack thrusted once, twice more before he came, the feeling of warm liquid shooting into Mac’s channel enough to make him quake a little, leaning into it when one of Jack’s hands came up to cradle the back of his head. He shakily unbent his legs from around Jack’s waist, exhaling his discomfort not only because Jack pulled out but because his feet touched the floor for the first time in at least twenty minutes.

“Ah, jeez,” Jack said, and Mac knew that tone—it was Jack’s _I did something bad_ voice mixed with some _I feel guilty about it_ (because those things weren’t mutually exclusive). “Are you okay?”

Mac stared at him like he’d spontaneously started speaking Urdu. “Are you crazy? I’m fantastic.” He put his hand flat on Jack’s chest and walked him back toward the bed until he was forced to sit on the edge of the mattress, Mac’s earlier nerves replaced by the kind of confidence he usually only possessed when he was defusing a bomb. “I’m also not done.” Something caught his eye—Jack’s cock hadn’t flagged despite the orgasm—and he smirked, dropping into his partner’s lap like they did this all the time. “And evidently neither are you.”

Jack stared at Mac with wide eyes, hands automatically going to Mac’s hips to steady him but conspicuously not touching the bruise he’d left behind that wrapped around the side of Mac’s waist like the curve of a belt. “So it doesn’t bother you?”

“Nope,” Mac replied, and found himself unable to do anything but grin like a fool when Jack tangled his fingers in his hair and brought him down for a kiss. It was an affectionate, languid thing that was so different from what they’d just done up against the wall, and it gave Mac an idea. “Lay down and close your eyes.”

Jack was in the midst of leaving another impressive hickey on Mac’s neck, and pulled back to look at him with a puzzled expression. “Why?”

Mac raised a challenging eyebrow. “You trust me?”

“Of course I do.” When Mac didn’t move, Jack rolled his eyes and flopped backward like a dying fish. “Fine, but if you’re gonna kill me and eat my corpse, just make it quick.”

Fingering your own asshole was generally not the time for a giggle fit, but Mac couldn’t stop the laughter from bubbling out. “Dude, I’m not a praying mantis—and also, it’s the females who eat their mates.”

Jack pulled a face, which was somehow funnier because his eyes were closed. “Well how the hell am I supposed to know that? It’s not like I go around and—holy _shit_!”

Mac agreed with that sentiment wholeheartedly, since he’d just shuffled around and impaled himself on Jack’s dick using the remains of the lube and Jack’s come to ease the way. It was just as thick and too-warm as it’d been the first time, but the new angle meant Mac practically felt the head of Jack’s cock in his throat, he was so deep inside.

“Jesus, darlin’, I thought you _weren’t_ trying to kill me.” One lift up and thrust down from Mac had Jack’s eyes rolling again, this time up and back into his head. “Oh God, Mac, you sure this ain’t too much?”

Mac bit his lower lip and shook his head, not sure what sound he would make if he tried to speak. His softened cock was beginning to take interest with each bounce in Jack’s lap, Mac’s hands splayed on his partner’s well-defined chest for balance. Sweat dripped down both their bodies, rendering the showers obsolete; Mac brought one hand up to rake back through his hair to get it out of his face, taking Jack in again and deliberately squeezing his inner muscles at the same time he swiveled his hips, which had Jack’s fingers digging into his thighs and leaving instant marks in their wake.

It was less than five minutes before Jack was coming again with a growl, calloused hand sliding up again to grab Mac by the waist and roll them over. When Mac realized what was happening he groaned, everything still bright with oversensitivity even though his cock was back in the game by then, hard and practically crushed to his stomach with Jack looming over him like some kind of wicked fantasy come to life. Except this wasn’t a fantasy, and Mac couldn’t have imagined the roughness with which Jack pinned his wrists over his head with one hand, the other going flat to the mattress to hold himself up and not put pressure on Mac’s stitches.

Their eyes locked, and Jack started fucking Mac _again_.

This time was _almost_ too much, but the ache of arousal in Mac’s belly coupled with the lance of pain from Jack’s grip on his wrists felt incredible. Each one of Jack’s thrusts was like a punch to the gut, and something like a sob got caught in Mac’s chest, coming out in the form of breathy little sounds each time Jack’s cock rammed home against his prostate. He wouldn’t have traded this feeling—wouldn’t have traded Jack—for anything in the world, and he knew in his bones that he would do anything he had to in order to keep this.

That revelation was followed swiftly by an untouched orgasm the likes of which Mac had never experienced; it felt like lightning up his spine, like the best kind of agony, whiting out his vision as a scream tore its way out of his mouth. He was so out of it he barely felt it when Jack came for a third and final time, barely managing to fling himself to the side in time so he didn’t crush Mac with his weight.

Mac took a moment to come back to himself, licking his lips before saying, “Holy fuck.”

“Yeah,” Jack agreed, his face in a pillow, voice cracking on the single syllable. He flopped around awkwardly before righting himself, slinging an arm over Mac’s middle below where the stitches ended, heedless of the sticky mess of come and sweat. “Are you—?”

“If you ask me if I’m okay again, I really will kill you,” Mac deadpanned, but he turned his head and almost melted at the mix of concern and love on Jack’s face, which he still had a hard time believing was meant for _him_. He brought a hand up and touched Jack’s cheek, smoothing a thumb across his stubble. “Jack, I’m fine—I’m more than fine, I’m _amazing_.” He grinned, thinking not of what he lost but instead what he’d gained. “And I love you too, by the way.”

And if Jack tackled Mac off the mattress and they were rolling around on the floor when Cage came back… well, at least it was proof they were alive for today, and they could see what tomorrow brought.


	6. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey guys! Once again, thank you all SO much for your kudos and comments, they mean everything to me! Here's the epilogue - it was written in one sitting and beta read by yours truly, so any mistakes are my own. Thank you for coming with me on this journey, and keep an eye out for my next fic! I don't want to give too much away, but it's an AU that involves demons, Mac in glasses, and a crazy plot that will (hopefully) blow your mind! :D Enjoy, and let me know what you think!

Angus MacGyver’s eyes snapped open from a mid-afternoon nap and closed immediately against the too-bright Brisbane sunshine. He was laid out on a lounge chair that was only partially protected by the hotel’s cabana, a pair of swim trunks and some sunglasses his only articles of clothing—well, just swim trunks right now, since he’d managed to lose the sunglasses while he was asleep.

A chuckle near his ear, followed closely by Jack holding out the offending Ray-Bans from his own comfortable sprawl on the lounger next to Mac’s. “I’m gonna start tying these things to your head, hoss—this time they hit me in the face.”

“Sorry, man,” Mac said with a chuckle, taking the sunglasses and slipping them back on his face before tangling Jack’s fingers with his own and stifling a yawn. “Cage back yet?”

Jack craned his neck to look toward the bar. “Nope. Looks like that bartender with the earring won’t take no for an answer. Should I go over there?”

Mac smiled, his free hand absently touching the thin but raised scars on his chest from the warehouse explosion almost a month prior; it felt like a lifetime ago, but the scars were one of the reminders that it wasn’t. “Pretty sure she can handle him. He kept hitting on me earlier too.”

Jack grunted in a way that suggested he wasn’t impressed. “So he’s an equal opportunity douchebag? Awesome.” He glanced first at Mac’s hand and then at the scars. “Something on your mind? Dumb question for you, I know.”

Mac took the hand on his chest and ran it through his hair instead, which was longer than he liked it and bleached almost white by the sun. In Afghanistan it had only ever been the ends that did that because of his helmet, but here in Australia he’d managed to cement himself in the California surfer-dude stereotype without trying. “Just nervous, I guess? It’s been a while since we’ve seen everyone. I can’t believe they’re all going to be here tomorrow.”

“I’m still not convinced Matty isn’t coming just to hand us our nuts for quitting,” Jack said, shuddering a little. “If she gets off the plane with any kind of blunt object, I’m running away and you’re on your own.” In direct opposition to that statement, he’d tugged on Mac’s hand enough that they were sharing Jack’s lounger, freckle-speckled skin pressed together from shoulders to knees. “Ten bucks says Bozer brings that unicorn pool floaty with him.”

“I know Bozer well enough to not take that bet,” Mac replied, right as there was a commotion at the bar, followed by the unmistakable sound of someone getting a drink dumped over their head. A look at the bar told him the earring-wearing bartender was soaked in coconut crème and rum, and Cage had made herself temporarily scarce. “See? Told you she had it handled. God, I can’t wait for Riley to introduce Leanna to Sam.”

“There’s a _Charlie’s Angels_ joke there, but I’m too lazy to find it,” Jack said, but his tone was distracted; when Mac looked, Jack was already watching him from behind his own yellow-tinted aviators. “You know, I just realized something—I never thanked you.”

Mac tilted his head in confusion. “Thanked me for what?”

“For coming after me? For believing I wasn’t dead?” Jack gestured to the beach around them, all fine white sand and tourist joy. “For leaving your job and your house behind to run away with me to a place with spiders the size of a grown man?” He lifted their joined hands and pressed a kiss to the back of Mac’s, a softness to his features that only a privileged few got to see. “Thank you, Mac. For everything.”

Mac spoke through a suddenly dry throat, blinking hard. He leaned forward and kissed Jack firmly on the mouth, saying when he pulled away, “You can call me Angus, you know.”

Before Jack could react to that revelation, a voice sounded from behind Mac: “I thought you hated being called Angus.”

Mac took a steadying breath before turning to face his father—he was less surprised that his dad was here and more surprised that it hadn’t happened sooner, and disappointed that the peace he and Jack had found was about to be ruined. James MacGyver was… not dressed for work, as Mac had expected, but instead wore an open linen shirt over a pair of shorts and flip-flops, a newspaper tucked under one arm and a straw hat on his head.

James reached out, squeezing Mac’s shoulder and nodding at Jack. “Dalton. Good to see you’re in one piece.” Eyes dropping to Mac and Jack’s still-connected hands, he added wryly, “I see you finally figured that out, too.”

Mac went from staring at the hand on his shoulder to exchanging a flabbergasted look with Jack before saying, “… what?”

James snorted. “I’m old, not stupid. He looks at you exactly how I used to look at your mother.” To Mac’s ever-growing amazement, his father tossed down the newspaper in favor of extending a hand to Jack. “Thank you. Not only did you bring down Walsh, you kept my son safe while you did it.”

“Neither of those things would’ve been a problem without you,” Jack pointed out, eyeing James’s hand for a moment before relenting, giving it what was maybe a too-firm shake. “And if it wasn’t for Mac, I would’ve probably lost my damn mind by now.”

James nodded, rocking a little on his heels. “The adrenaline dump that happens when you use the resources provided by the KX7—” a rueful smile “—pardon me, the _KX8_ , can have major negative effects on the brain without a cooldown method.” He paused, eyes flicking once again to their joined hands. “And suddenly I _really_ don’t want to think about what that is for you.”

Mac let out a slightly hysterical-sounding laugh. “So you didn’t fly to Australia to kidnap Jack—you came to lecture us on our sex life?”

James sighed. “Angus, I came here because I wanted to see my son. I knew you quit the Phoenix and took off, presumably with Dalton and Samantha Cage, but trying to get more information than that out of Matty was like trying to get blood from a stone. I swear to you, I didn’t bring anyone with me, and nobody knows where I am. I know it may be hard for you to believe given my track record, but I _do_ care about you, and Jack’s right—without me and my mistakes, none of this would’ve happened.” He looked Mac directly in the eyes and said words he never thought he’d hear from his father: “I’m sorry, son.”

Mac gazed out at the ocean, acutely aware of the pressure of Jack’s fingers around his, firm and reassuring. He thought about it for a moment, weighing the pros and cons in his mind, and made a decision. “I’m sorry, too.” He paused just long enough to watch his father squirm, before letting a smile creep on to his face. “Sorry you got here after Cage dumped her drink on the bartender. Good luck getting your scotch and soda.”

His father grinned at him, a fully-fledged thing Mac couldn’t remember seeing since before his mother died. “You think I can’t bartend? I’ll have the hotel paying me in ten minutes.”

“Now _that’s_ a bet I’ll take,” Mac said, waiting until he’d watched James hop over the bar and start mixing a pina colada for a woman in a bikini before turning to Jack. “Do you fucking believe this?”

Jack laughed and shook his head. “Nope. But I guess if he wants to try his hand at being a father instead of an asshole, it’s not really my place to stop him.” He wrapped an arm around Mac’s middle, hugging him tightly and kissing his temple. “It _is_ my place to tell you how much I love you, and that we can totally ditch him and fly to Maui or something, just say the word.”

Mac laughed. “I love you too. And I don’t care where we wind up, as long as we do it together.”

Jack’s mouth quirked into a half-smile, already leaning in. “That’s kind of our thing, remember? You go kaboom—”

“—I go kaboom.” Mac met his lips halfway.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Liked this fic? Well, I wrote a book! Search for "Stitches Samantha Simard" on Amazon (Kindle and paperback) or Barnes & Noble (paperback or hardcover) and pick up a copy of my debut LGBT mystery novel! My Tumblr is thesammykinz.tumblr.com if you want to keep up with me! :)


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